LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Tests 

OF THE 

Various Kinds of Truth 

BEING 

A TREATISE OF APPLIED LOGIC 



LECTURES 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE OHIO WESLEYAN 
UNIVERSITY 

ON THE MERRICK FOUNDATION 






JAMES MCCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L. 

Ex-President of Princeton College, N. J. 



S^Zk<X< Or -O/VGq - 
SECOND SERIES. 

V JUL 311889^ 



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NEW YORK: HUNT &> EATON 
CI NCI NN A TI: CRANSTON &• STOIVE 






THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



WASHINGTON 



1 
Si 



Copyright, 1889, by 

H UNT & EATON, 

New York. 



Introductory Note. 



THE distinguished author of the following lectures 
needs no introduction to American readers. His 
eminent services as an educator, and his still more emi- 
nent philosophical writings, have given him a world- 
wide reputation. These lectures were especially prepared 
for delivery before the faculty and students of the Ohio 
Wesleyan University on the foundation indicated on 
the title-page. This foundation contemplates an annual 
course of at least five lectures on Experimental and 
Practical Religion. A previous course, by the late Rev. 
Daniel Curry, treats especially of the importance of re- 
ligion in the higher institutions of learning. The pres- 
ent course is deemed eminently appropriate, as tending 
to establish the foundations of the belief on which the 
entire religious life must rest. That the lectures are 
able and happily adapted to meet some of the subtle 
forms of prevailing unbelief will be readily admitted by 
all intelligent readers. They are given to the public in 
the belief that they will be eagerly sought, and that 
their wide circulation cannot fail to accomplish great 
good. They are accompanied with the prayer that such 
may be the result. The next course will be delivered 
by an eminent divine upon some of the fundamental 
principles of Experimental Religion. 

Ohio Wesleyan University, 
March sS, i8Sq. 



PREFACE. 



THE age may be characterized as one of unsettled 
opinion. Our ambitious youth are not satis- 
fied with the past, its opinions, and practices. Au- 
thority is not worshiped by them ; they have no 
partiality for creeds and confessions. They do not 
accept, without first doubting, the truths supposed 
to be long established. In searching into the foun- 
dation of the old temples they have raised a cloud 
of dust and left lying a heap of rubbish. It is an 
age out of which good and evil, either or both, may 
come, according as it is guided. We may entertain 
fears, for it is dancing on the edge of a precipice 
down which it may fall. We may cherish hope, for 
it is an inquiring age. 

Every form and phase of opinion seeks to have a 
philosophy, in which it may embody and express 
itself and by which it maybe defended. Agnostics 
is the shape or figure which the doubting and hesi- 
tating spirit takes. It is not a new heresy. It has 
been held by a few in every age ; it is now espoused 
by many, provisionally, till something more solid or 



G Preface. 

showy is propounded. It used to be called nes- 
cience, which maintains that nothing can be known, 
and nihilism, which holds that there is nothing to 
be known. It is of little use trying to argue with 
it, for it allows us no premises as a ground on which 
to start, and has no body or substance that we can 
attack. It is easy to show that it is suicidal. It is 
an evident contradiction to affirm that we know 
that we can know nothing. But when we have 
demonstrated this we have not destroyed it any 
more than we have killed a specter by thrusting a 
spear into it; for its defense is that all truth is con- 
tradictory. The best way of dealing with it is to 
allow it to dance as it may, like the shadows of the 
clouds, and, meanwhile, to found and build up truth 
and set it up before the mind, that it may be seen 
in its own light. It is well known that when we see 
a solid object through and beyond a specter the 
specter melts away and disappears. So it will be 
with agnosticism — it will vanish wherr we fix our 
eyes upon the truth. 

But meanwhile an immense number and variety 
of crude views and opinions on the most moment- 
ous subjects, such as morality and religion, are set 
before the young and pressed upon their accept- 
ance. In consequence they often feel a difficulty in 
knowing what to believe, and they may be led to 



Preface. 7 

believe too little or too much. In these circum- 
stances it is of vast importance to provide them 
with tests which may enable them to distinguish 
between truth and fiction and settle them in the 
truth. 

This is what is attempted in this work, which is 
meant for those who wish for their own satisfaction 
to know on what foundations the truths on which 
they are required to believe rest. 

It is hoped, being a treatise on what Kant calls 
applied logic, which may be quite as useful as pri- 
mary or formal logic, it may be used as a text-book. 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE FIRST. 

PAGE 

Truths to be Assumed II 



LECTURE SECOND. 
Discursive or Deductive Truth 27 

LECTURE THIRD. 
Inductive Truths 43 

LECTURE FOURTH. 

The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. The Joint In- 
ductive and Deductive. Hypotheses and Verification. 
Chance. Induction Cannot Give Absolute Truth. We 
Know in Part 79 

LECTURE FIFTH. 
Testimony. Is it Sufficient to Prove the Supernatural? 107 



INTRODUCTION. 



WE have truth when our ideas are conformed 
to things. The aim of this work is to show 
that there is truth, that truth can be found, and 
that there are tests by which we may determine 
when we have found it. We do not propose to 
guide inquirers in any particular department of in- 
vestigation ; this can best be done in introductions 
to the books and lectures treating of the several 
branches of knowledge. 

Kant and the German metaphysicians have shown 
again and again that there is no one absolute cri- 
terion to settle all truth for us ; that will determine, 
for example, at one and the same time, whether 
there is a fourth dimension of space, whether the 
planet Jupiter is inhabited, where the soul goes at 
death, and what kind of crops we are to have next 
year. But it can be shown that there are truths 
which may be ascertained and that there are criteria 
which prove when they are so ; and these clear, sure, 
and capable of being definitely expressed. But the 
test which settles one truth for us does not neces- 



10 Introduction. 

sarily settle all others, or any others. It is neces- 
sary to distinguish between different sorts of truth, 
and we should be satisfied when we find a test of 
each kind. I am convinced that historical, scien- 
tific, and logical investigation has advanced so far 
that we can now enunciate criteria for every kind 
of truth. The aim of the criteria, it should be 
noticed, is not so much to help us to discover truth 
as to determine when we have found it. 



LECTURE FIRST. 

TRUTHS TO BE ASSUMED. 

I. 

THE mind must start with something. There 
are things which it knows at once. I know 
pleasure and pain. I do more: I know myself as 
feeling pleasure and pain. I know that I am sur- 
rounded with material objects, extended and exer- 
cising properties. I know, by barely contemplating 
them, that these two straight lines cannot contain a 
space. These are called first truths, There must 
be first truths before there can be secondary ones ; 
original before there can be derivative ones. Can 
we discover and enunciate these ? I believe we 
can. 

We are not at liberty, indeed, to appeal to a first 
principle when we please, or because it suits our 
purpose. When we are left without evidence we 
are not therefore allowed to allege that we need no 
evidence. When we are defeated in argument we 
are not to be permitted to escape by falling back 
on what is unproved and unprovable. It is true 
that we cannot prove every thing, for this would 



12 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

imply an infinite chain of proofs every link of which 
would hang on another, while the whole would 
hang on nothing — that is, be incapable of proof. 
We cannot prove every thing by mediate evidence, 
but we can show that we are justified in assuming 
certain things. We cannot prove by any external 
circumstance that two straight lines cannot inclose 
a space, but we can show that we are justified in 
assuming it. We are to " prove all things." But 
there are some things which have their proof in 
themselves. We discover it by simply looking at 
the things. It is thus that we know that we exist ; 
that the shortest distance between two points is a 
straight line ; that hypocrisy is a sin. We need no 
external evidence. The evidence is in the thing; in 
the very nature of the thing. We do not require 
mediate, we have immediate proof. 

II. 

This kind of truth is to be distinguished from two 
Others for which we require what is called mediate 
proof, First, there are cases in which we get this 
by simply thinking. A truth being allowed we in- 
fer something else from it. Thus, being assured that 
all men are responsible, we argue that heathens, 
being men, are responsible. Secondly, in other 
cases we need observation and a gathering of facts, 



Truths to be Assumed. 13 

that is induction ; in order to the discovery of a gen- 
eral fact or law. It is thus that we have discovered 
that a year consists of so many days ; thus that 
Newton discovered the law of gravitation, and Dal- 
ton that of definite proportions in the composition 
of bodies. These two last kinds of cases, which 
may be called the logical and inductive, differ from 
the first, which may be called the metaphysical. In 
this lecture first truths are treated of; in those that 
follow, reasoned and observational truths. In all the 
three our aim is to discover the tests. 

III. 

The evidence of the first class of truths is discov- 
ered by what is called Intuition, which looks directly 
on the objects ; the truth is therefore called Intui- 
tive. It is also called First, or Primary, as it is the 
first in the order of nature and things. It is desig- 
nated as Fundamental in that it bears up other 
truths. It is described as Necessary inasmuch as, 
perceiving the objects directly, we cannot be made to 
believe otherwise. Since the publication of Kanfs 
Kritic of Pure Reason it is more frequently de- 
scribed as a priori in that it is known prior to a 
gathered experience, the truth discovered by which 
is called a posteriori. It maybe spoken of as Origi- 
nal, as opposed to what is Derived. These are not 



14 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

the most prominent truths to the ordinary observer ; 
they lie deep down in the soul ; they are the foun- 
dation on which other truths are laid. 

They are numerous and varied. Some of them, 
and these the first and original ones, are cognition 
of things. Thus we all know body, with its proper- 
ties, and self or spirit, with its properties. Some of 
them are beliefs — such as our belief in space and 
time and in their continuity. From these arise 
judgments, in which we compare two or more cog- 
nitions and beliefs and discover a relation between 
them. These judgments may be arranged under 
eight heads. In identity, we declare that it is im- 
possible to be and not to be at the same time. In 
comprehension, we declare that the whole is equal 
to the sum of its parts. In resemblance, we affirm 
that what is true of a class must be true of all the 
members of the class. We know that body is in 
space. We know that all events happen in time. 
In quantity we are sure that equals added to equals 
are equals. In ' contemplating things as acting we 
maintain that every property implies a substance. 
When we see an effect we are sure that it has had a 
cause. These are intellectual cognitions, beliefs, and 
judgments. But we have also primary moral con- 
victions. We know at once the distinction between 
moral good and evil ; we declare love to our neigh- 



Truths to be Assumed. 15 

bors to be a virtue binding upon us, and we need 
no one to argue with us to convince us that to tell 
a lie or cheat our neighbor is evil. 

IV. 

These primitive convictions run through our 
thoughts, ideas, and acts. Every man acts upon 
them. We are sure that we exist and that we have 
a body, extended, and acting on us and other objects. 
We know that we are the same persons to-day that 
we were yesterday. The creditor, when he receives 
only part of what is owing him, tells his debtor that 
this is less than the whole. When a man knows 
that spring, summer, autumn, and winter make up 
the seasons he expects when the three first are past 
that winter is coming. A farmer does not propose 
to inclose a field by two straight fences. When 
we awake from sleep we are confident that we have 
been alive all the time since we fell asleep. The 
clerk in his calculations acts on the principle that 
equals subtracted from equals are equals. When 
we see a body we are convinced that it has 
properties. When we see a house on fire we are 
sure it has been ignited. The circumstance that all 
men act upon these principles led the Scottish 
school of metaphysicians to call them principles of 
common sense. 



16 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

V. 

We may assume all such truths. They do not 
need proof. A man who would seek it must be be- 
side himself. He may be compared to one going 
out with a taper to see the sun. These truths shine 
in their own light. We may use them in all our 
thoughts and inquiries and in all our arguments 
with our fellow-men, provided we properly enun- 
ciate them. 

A man had better assume his own existence. He 
might find it difficult to establish it by argument. 
But if he is determined, by all means let him try it ; 
he will only be impressed the more with the impos- 
sibility of his doing it. How will he do it ? To 
what will he appeal ? How will he begin ? With 
the testimony of his neighbors? He will find that 
he has clearer proof of his own existence than of 
that of his neighbor, and that he cannot prove the 
existence of his neighbors till he first proves his 
own. It is the same with all other self-evident 
truths. We cannot prove them by other truths, but 
we may use them to prove other truths. 

VI. 
Let us seek to determine precisely the nature of 
these truths. They may be viewed under three 
aspects — aspects of one and the same thing. 



Truths to be Assumed. 17 

1. They are Perceptions of Tilings. We perceive 
that body is extended, and that it exercises proper- 
ties, suclvas resistance to our energy and to other 
bodies. We are conscious of self as thinking and 
feeling. We believe that space and time extend 
beyond what we observe of them. We decide at 
once that contradictions cannot both be true ; that 
the abstract implies the concrete; that universals 
imply singulars; that we cannot be both here and 
in China at the same time ; that two halves make up 
the whole ; that properties imply a substance ; that 
a change is produced by an adequate power. We 
look on self-sacrifice, for a good cause, as good, and 
treachery as an evil. All these perceptions are di- 
rect, and are in consciousness. 

2. They are Regulative Principles. I do not be- 
lieve that there is any such thing as innate ideas. 
Locke exploded them forever. But the mind of 
the child is not altogether a nonentity or a blank. 
It has powers or capacities ready to be exercised 
on the appropriate objects being presented. These 
are in the mind as gravitation lies in matter, as life 
remains in the seed all winter, as seeds have re- 
mained, with life in them, in the tombs of Egypt for 
thousands of years. 

Mr. Mill has shown that all the powers in nature 
are tendencies. They tend to act according to 



18 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

their nature. Thus oxygen tends to join in definite 
proportions with hydrogen to form water ; bodies 
attract other bodies to them inversely according to 
the square of the distance. Our ideas tend, unless 
interfered with by external objects, to follow each 
other in a certain order; when two ideas have been 
in the mind together, the one tends to cull the 
other, and like suggests like. In much the same 
way the powers of intuition abiding in the mind 
ever tend to act, and are called forth by objects. In 
a sense, they so far direct and control the mind. Of 
the principle we are not conscious, but we are con- 
scious of its exercises, which are the perceptions of 
which I have been speaking under last head. 

3. They may become Axioms. All the percep- 
tions of which I have been discoursing are in the 
first instance singular or individual, and not abstract 
or general. We do not say of every two straight 
lines that they cannot inclose space, but of these 
two straight lines before us that they cannot in- 
close a space. We do not at first announce that all 
men are responsible, but of ourselves or some other 
person that he is responsible. I do not formally 
proclaim the metaphysical principle, every effect has 
a cause, but of this particular effect, the burning of a 
rick of hay, that it has had a cause. But then we 
can generalize our individual perceptions. We see 



Truths to be Assumed. 19 

that what is true of the object or case before us is 
true of the same object or cases every-where and 
in all places. We now reach general maxims true 
of the objects at all times and in all circumstances. 
Fraud cannot be good on the planet Earth, or the 
planet Jupiter, or the dog-star Sirius. Parallel 
lines, we see, will never meet in earth, or star, or 
the space beyond. We have now such axioms as 
those of Euclid. We have moral maxims such as 
the Ten Commandments, and the precepts in the 
Sermon on the Mount. 

VII. 

But what we have specially to do here is to 
enumerate the criteria by which such truths may 
be tried, and which will settle for us whether we are 
entitled to assume without any mediate proof 
what may be presented to us by ourselves or others 
for our acceptance. 

SELF-EVIDENCE is the primary test of that kind 
of truth which we are entitled to assume without 
mediate proof. We perceive the object to exist by 
simply looking at it. The truth shines in its own 
light, and, in order to see, we do not require light to 
shine upon it from any other quarter. We are 
conscious, directly, of self as understanding, as think- 
ing, or as feeling, and we need no indirect evidence. 



20 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

Thus, too, we perceive by the eye a colored surface, 
and by the muscular touch a resisting object, and 
by the moral sense the evil of hypocrisy. The 
proof is seen by the contemplative mind in the 
things themselves. We are convinced that we need 
no other proof. A proffered probation from any 
other quarter would not add to the strength of our 
conviction. We do not seek any external proof, 
and if any were pressed upon us we would feel it to 
be unnecessary — nay, to be an encumbrance, and 
almost an insult to our understanding. 

But let us properly understand the nature of this 
self-evidence. It has constantly been misunder- 
stood and misrepresented. It is not a mere feel- 
ing or an emotion belonging to the sensitive part 
of our nature. It is not blind instinct, or a belief 
in what we cannot see. It is not above reason or 
below reason ; it is an exercise of primary reason 
prior, in the nature of things, to any derivative ex- 
ercises. It is not, as Kant represents it, of the 
nature of a form in the mind imposed on objects 
contemplated and giving them a shape and color. 
It is a perception, it is an intuition of the object. 
We inspect these two straight lines, and perceive 
them to be such in their nature that they cannot 
inclose a space. If two straight lines go on for an 
inch without coming nearer each other, we are sure 



Truths to be Assumed. 21 

they will be no nearer if lengthened millions of 
miles as straight lines. On contemplating deceit 
we perceive the act to be wrong in its very nature. 
It is not a mere sentiment such as we feel on the 
contemplation of pleasure and pain ; it is a knowl- 
edge of an object. It is not the mind imposing or 
superinducing on the thing what is not in the thing ; 
it is simply the mind perceiving what is in the 
thing. It is not merely subjective, it is also object- 
ive — to use phrases very liable to be misunder- 
stood ; or, to speak clearly, the perceiving mind 
(subject) perceives the thing (object). This is the 
most satisfactory of all evidence ; and this because 
in it we are immediately cognizant of the thing. 
There is no evidence so ready to carry conviction. 
We cannot so much as conceive or imagine any 
evidence stronger. 

NECESSITY is a secondary criterion. It has been 
represented by Leibnitz and many metaphysicians 
as the first and the essential test. This I regard as 
a mistake. Self-evidence comes first, and the other 
follows and is derived from it. We perceive an ob- 
ject before us and know so much of its nature ; and 
we cannot be made to believe that there is no 
such object, or that it is not what we know it to be. 
I demur to the idea so often pressed upon us that 
we are to believe a certain proposition because we 



22 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

are necessitated to believe in it. This sounds too 
much like fatality to be agreeable to the free spirit 
of man. It is because we are conscious of self 
that we cannot be made to believe that we do not 
exist. The account given of the principle by Her- 
bert Spencer is a perverted and a vague one : all 
propositions are to be accepted as unquestionable 
whose negative is inconceivable. This does not 
give us a direct criterion as self-evidence does, and 
the word inconceivable is very ambiguous. But 
necessity, while it is not the primary is a potent 
secondary test. The self-evidence convinces us ; 
the necessity prevents us from holding any different 
conviction. 

CATHOLICITY or Universality is the tertiary test. 
By this is meant that it is believed by all men. It 
is the argument from catholicity, or common con- 
sent — the sensus communis. All men are found to 
assent to the particular truth when it is fairly laid 
before them, as, for instance, that the shortest dis- 
tance between two points is a straight line. It 
would not be wise nor safe to make this the primary 
test, as some of the ancients did. For, in the com- 
plexity of thought, in the constant actual mixing 
up of experiential with immediate evidence, it is 
difficult to determine what all men believe. It is 
even conceivable that all men might be deceived 



Truths to be Assumed. 23 

by reason of the deceitfulness of the faculties and 
the illusive nature of things. But this tertiary 
comes in to corroborate the primary test, or rather 
to show that the proposition can stand the primary 
test which proceeds on the observation of the very 
thing, in which it is satisfactory to find that all 
men are agreed. 

Combine these and we have a perfect means of 
determining what are first truths. The first gives 
us a personal assurance of which we can never be 
deprived ; the second secures that we cannot con- 
quer it ; the third, that we can appeal to all men as 
having the same conviction. The first makes known 
realities; the second restrains us from breaking off 
from them ; the third shows us that we are sur- 
rounded with a community of beings to whom we 
can address ourselves in the assurance of meeting 
with a response. The first is the most satisfactory, 
as it brings us closest to things. The second is the 
most definite and decisive, as it admits of no denial. 
The third brings us into closest relationship with our 
fellow men and gives us confidence in addressing 
them. The three constitute a treble cord which 
cannot be broken. 

It should be noticed that these tests apply not only 
to our primitive knowledge but to our primitive 
beliefs. We have such beliefs. We believe in the 



24 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

existence of things which we cannot know by the 
senses, which we cannot see or hear, smell or taste 
or touch. We believe in space and time as stretching 
away beyond our ken. We believe in the infinite, 
though we may not be able fully to comprehend it. 
Our beliefs require to be tested fully and as much as 
our knowledge. A large number of men and women, 
even some who are shrewd and wise, are apt to 
cherish fancies which have no realities correspond- 
ing to them. There are classes of people who are 
particularly addicted to such visions. You hear 
them say, " I feel this to be true. I must believe 
it." A more cultivated set of people tell you this is 
so interesting that I must cleave to it. There are 
numbers thus led into great extravagances of cre- 
dence which expose them to ridicule or land them 
in folly, or, it may be, in very serious errors or 
mistakes. 

Now there is a method of keeping people from 
being allured into bogs by these will-o'-wisps. We 
are to try the spirits whether they are of God. We 
have a reliable means of trying them. We may, 
we should, inquire whether what we are invited to 
assume is self-evident truth and not a mere fancy ; 
whether we are necessitated to believe it as we look 
at the things, or whether we may not be led to 
adopt or reject it by the wishes of the heart ; 



Truths to be Assumed. 25 

whether it is held by man as man, or merely by 
people with idiosyncrasies and prejudices. Our 
feelings were never meant to be the tests of truth, 
though they may prompt us to seek it, may irradi- 
ate it so as to make it more attractive, and instil 
life into the soul and thereby prompt to action. 

It is to be admitted that there is a mysticism 
which is very fascinating and at times elevating, as, 
for instance, in the pages of Thomas a Kempis. But 
it may be delusive, and the error maybe accepted 
along with the truth. We may, by the criteria I 
have announced, get all the good without the ac- 
companying evil ; we may root out the weeds, that 
the flower and fruit-bearing plants may flourish the 
better. The tests clear away the mists that we may 
have a full view of the beauties of the sky and 
landscape. 

It will be understood that what is offered in this 
lecture does not profess to be the whole of knowl- 
edge ; it is only primary knowledge. A far greater 
number and variety of truths are reached in other 
ways than by intuition, while, however, they always 
presuppose it. Yet only the foundation-stones have 
been laid — I hope, as the Free Masons say, that 
" this foundation is well laid," that it is " a sure 
foundation." The mature tree is not yet before 
us ; only a few seeds have been sown and some 



26 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

roots planted, which are well "rooted and grounded." 
These primitive truths, like the granite rocks, go 
down deepest into the earth and mount the highest 
toward heaven. They bind and guarantee all other 
truths. They give us what no other powers can, 
which sense cannot give nor understanding give — 
eternal truths and eternal morality. They look as 
if they were the very footstool of God, before which 
we bow and put up our petitions for further instruc- 
tion to him who sitteth upon the throne. 



w 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 27 



LECTURE SECOND. 
DISCURSIVE OR DEDUCTIVE TRUTH. 

I. 

E have seen what are the truths with which 
every mind starts. We are now to view it 
as adding to the stock. It may do so in two ways. 
It may by its own power, or by a gathered observa- 
tion of facts. In this lecture I am to treat of the 
first of these methods. 

The process by which this end is accomplished is 
discursive or deductive ; that is, we proceed from 
a truth given or allowed to something else implied 
in or deduced from it. It being granted that all 
men are mortal, we at once conclude that this man 
and that man and that we ourselves must die. 

What is admitted is called the premise or prem- 
ises. These may be got from one or other of 
two quarters : from intuition — that is, immediate 
inspection of things — or from induction, that is, 
from a gathered collection of facts. The first of 
these has been expounded in last lecture, the other 
will be unfolded in the lectures which follow. 

We pre-suppose, then, that the mind has got 



28 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

certain facts allowed it as premises. These may be 
intuitive or inductive ; one or both. In looking at 
these we discover that certain truths are involved 
in them and may be legitimately drawn from them. 
In this lecture I am to unfold the process by which 
this end is accomplished, to determine the laws, 
their extent, and their limits. 

The discursive process is usually described as con- 
sisting of three elements — the Notion, Judgment, 
and Reasoning. There is the notion, which, when 
expressed in language, is the term. There is judg- 
ment, which, Avhen expressed, is the proposition. 
There is reasoning, which, when put in words, is 
the argument. By means of each of these we reach 
derivative truth, which may be rigidly tested. 

Logic is the science which treats of discursive 

thought. I am not, in this little work, to give a 

system of logic. I use logic simply as furnishing 

/ the criteria by which deductive truth may be tried. 

The grand regulating principle of all discursive 
thought is that what is drawn from the premise or 
premises must be in the premises. Being there, and 
being seen to be there, we draw it out. But we 
must take care that what we bring out is in what 
we have derived it from. This law, rigidly carried 
out, will preserve us from all inconclusive reason- 
ing. We cannot draw light from cucumbers, be- 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 29 

cause there is no light in the cucumber. But, it 
being allowed us that all men have a conscience, 
we infer that this liar, though he has not obeyed it, 
has a conscience. This general rule may be applied 
to every kind of deduction or discursive thought, 
and, taken along with other and more minute 
rules founded on it, decides for us whether we are 
proceeding on the laws of thought, Avhich, being 
planted or developed in our nature by God, are 
always truthful and authoritative. Each of the 
two great processes will be found to have its own 
laws. 

II. 
The NOTION OR Term. First under this head is 
the Singular notion, such as the earth, the heavens, 
Homer, Shakespeare, George Washington, " sky, 
mountains, rivers, winds, lake, lightnings, yea, with 
clouds and thunders, and a soul to make them felt 
and feeling." The singulars are always concrete; 
that is, they contain an aggregate of qualities which 
we call attributes ; thus, the earth has elementary 
bodies and is attracted to the sun. I call such 
notions Singular Concretes. Secondly, there is the 
Abstract notion; that is, notion of part of a whole, 
more specially of an attribute of an object. As ex- 
amples I may give, leg of table ; foot of a man ; foot 
of a mountain ; gravity, beauty, honesty, human- 



30 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

ity. Thirdly, there is the General notion, the uni- 
versal of the schoolmen, the concept of the German, 
such as stones, plants, animals, man, woman, angels. 
All these contain an indefinite number of objects ; 
namely, all that possess the common qualities of 
the class. 

Now we may derive truths from each of these 
classes. Thus from singular concrete truths we 
can draw abstracts; from this body before us we 
can get the abstraction gravity; from this man, 
manliness; from this woman, beauty ; from Wash- 
ington, patriotism. Again, from singulars we can 
form generals ; by help of abstraction all can unite 
things by common attributes in them, and form the 
class, rose, lily, dog, horse, man, American. 

Now it is of the utmost moment that we know 
the nature of the notions and terms we employ. In 
thinking, in reading, in speaking we should know 
what sorts of terms are used ; whether they are 
singular or common, concrete or abstract. In em- 
ploying concretes we should ascertain, more or less 
definitely, the properties possessed by them. It is 
a great mistake to look upon an attribute as having 
an independent existence ; gravity, for instance, has 
an existence only in the bodies of which it is a 
quality. In thinking, in speaking of universal or 
classes we should have an idea, the clearer the 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 31 

better, of the qualities which combine the ob- 
jects. 

Of all fallacies that of confusion is the most com- 
mon and the most misleading, and of all fallacies 
of confusion that of notions or terms is the most 
injurious, being more so than those of judgment 
or reasoning. When an object or a cause is placed 
fairly before us we can commonly judge of it and 
reason about it correctly. But when it is put in 
imperfectly understood terms our thinking is apt 
to be perplexed and mistaken. I believe that more 
than one half of the errors of thinking arise from 
confusion in our Notions. The prejudices of the 
heart work on these, " the wish is father of the 
thought," and the issue is misapprehension and 
error, and, it may be, sin. 

There has been an immense amount of contro- 
versy about abstract and general terms. It was the 
grand topic of discussion among the scholastics in 
the Middle Ages, and I am convinced that it is of 
vast moment to clear up the subject. It is still in 
a confused state. I feel no difficulty in comprehend- 
ing the nature of the abstract and general notion. 
The question is, What reality is there in these no- 
tions ? I think it can be answered clearly and sat- 
isfactorily. The abstract has no independent reality 
— its reality is in the things from which it is ab- 



82 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

stracted ; thus honesty has a reality in the honest 
man. The universal or class notion has a reality in 
the objects embraced in it and in the 0" nl .ities com- 
bining them. The common notion, " vertebrate 
animal," has a reality in the animals and in the ver- 
tebrate column which they all possess. 

III. 

Judgment; which, when expressed in language, 
is the Proposition. In this we compare two no- 
tions ; or, rather, the two things embraced in the 
notions declaring their agreement or disagreement. 
In making the comparison we have to look to the 
nature of the notions and observe what is embraced 
in them. The comparison we make may be viewed 
under two aspects. " The bird sings." Here we 
have two terms. " The bird " and " sings," or, " is 
singing." The one of these is singular — " the bird ; " 
the other is common — " is singing." In compre- 
hension, that is, in regard to the qualities pos- 
sessed by it, it means that it has " the attribute of 
singing ; " in extension, that is, in regard to the 
objects in its class, it declares that the bird is 
" among singing creatures." These two are in- 
volved in each other ; the one implies the other. 

In forming these judgments we should attend 
carefully to the nature of the two things compared, 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 33 

and, as we do so, we may draw a number of infer- 
ences. These have a place, and an important place, 
allotted t-~ fV, em in all advanced works on logic. 
They are called Immediate Inferences. I call them 
Implied Judgments. TfiuTby subalternation, that 
is, of things under classes, we infer that if all men 
be responsible the heathen are responsible. Under 
extension we say what is true of a class is true 
of each member of the class ; for example, what is 
true of all roses is true of the rose before us. Under 
conversion we turn the subject into the predicate, 
and the predicate into the subject ; thus, it being 
given that all poets are men of genius, it follows 
that some men of genius — not necessarily all men 
of genius — are poets. When we have contradictory 
propositions we are sure that when the one is true 
the other must be false. 

The following inferences have been drawn in 
Thomson's Outlines of the Laws of Thought from 
the proposition men are responsible : 

In Extension. 

Every man is in the class responsible. 

This man is responsible. 

Some men are responsible. 

Some responsible beings are men. 

It is not true that no men are responsible. 

It is not true that some men are not responsible, etc. 



34 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

In Comprehension. 
Man exists. 

Responsibility is a real attribute. 
Responsibility is an attribute of every man. 
Responsibility is an attribute of this man. 
Responsibility is an attribute of every tribe of men. 
Responsibility is an attribute of some men. 
Irresponsibility may be denied of all men. 
No man is irresponsible. 
Irresponsible beings are not men. 
Men of wealth are responsible with their wealth. 
To punish men is to punish responsible men, etc. 

IV. 

Reasoning. This is the highest form of the 
discursive processes. Every human being is em- 
ploying it. The infant, the child, is using it per- 
petually in drawing conclusions from what he ob- 
serves ; in determining, for instance, the distances of 
objects, which it has been shown he does not know 
instinctively. The very fool uses it, only, however, 
about insignificant objects, say, his animal wants, 
as when he argues that food will satisfy his hunger. 
The madman, commonly starting from mistaken 
premises, from a wrong idea and belief impressed 
upon his mind, often bursts forth into wonderful 
displays of it. The intellectual ability of a man 
(I do not say his genius) is shown in the extent and. 
agility with which he reasons. There is reasoning, 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 35 

in a lower or higher shape, in the every-day trans- 
actions of life, as when we avoid danger and seek 
to secure what will gratify us. It has a neces- 
sary place in all the sciences which combine in a 
system the objects which present themselves to 
us. Mathematics, beginning with definitions and 
axioms which are self-evident, consists in reason- 
ing throughout, and this often of a very deli- 
cate and recondite nature, as in quaternions and 
functions. 

Now it is surely of vast moment, since so much 
of mental activity is thus exercised, that we should 
have decisive tests to determine when we are reason- 
ing correctly. Now we have had this ever since the 
days of Aristotle, who analyzed the reasoning pro- 
cesses for us in the fourth century before Christ. 
Attempts have been made once and again to set 
aside his account, but all of these, after a brief ap- 
parent success, are admitted to have been failures. 
This analytic sets before us all the forms which 
reasoning takes, and thus enables us to try every 
sort of pretended argument. 

The whole of reasoning is founded on one simple 
law called the Dictum of Aristotle, which takes two 
forms. Put in the form of extension, that is, of the 
objects which the terms contain, it is, "Whatever 
is true of a class is true of all the members of a 



36 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

class." It may also take the form of comprehen- 
sion, that is, of the attributes of the class. "A 
part of a part of an attribute will be part of the 
whole attribute." Reasoning, when spread out, 
takes the form of a syllogism, in which we have 
two premises and a conclusion. First, we have two 
notions given us in the premises, and we cannot, 
on looking on them, say whether they do or do not 
agree. We are not told in Scripture whether John 
the Baptist was a priest, but we call in a third term, 
son of a priest, and we compare each of the other 
two with this third term. We know that the sons 
of priests were also priests, and we have the syl- 
logism: 

The sons of priests were priests ; 
The Baptist was the son of a priest ; 
Therefore he was a priest. 

This type determines for us whether reasoning is 
valid. If it cannot be put in this form it is invalid. 

This is the Categorical form. But, being guided 
by the same dictum, it may take a Hypothetical 
shape : 

If this man has consumption 

He will soon die. 
He has consumption. 

He will soon die. 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 37 

Or some cases may be put conveniently in the 
form of a Disjunctive: 

Lines are either straight or curved. 
The line A B is not straight ; 
It must be curved. 

Or it may be best exhibited in the form of a 

dilemma : 

If a man can help a thing he should not fret about it. 
If he cannot help a thing he should not fret about it. 
But he can either help a thing or not help it. 
In either case he should not fret about it. 

In some cases we have a seriate or chained rea- 
soning by a series of arguments. 

I simply refer to these forms. I am not to 
spread out their details. This is done with care 
and accuracy in every Logical treatise of any value. 
They can all be reduced to the form of the syllo- 
gism which depends on the Dictum. These Logical 
forms supply us with tests clear and certain for 
every kind of reasoning, in science or in the busi- 
ness of life. 

Logic has at times been exposed to ridicule be- 
cause of its multiplied technical rules, which, it is 
alleged, rather perplex and confuse the mind, and 
lead it into sophistry. Thus the great English 
satirist describes Hudibras : 



38 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

He was in logic a great critic, 

Profoundedly skilled in analytic ; 

He could distinguish and divide 

A hair twixt south and south-west side; 

On either which he would dispute, 

Confute, change hands, and still confute. 

The pilot of a ship often needs to decide between 
narrower distinctions than that between west and 
north-west side, and if he neglects to do so his ves- 
sel may be wrecked. So every man, in his voyage 
through the troubled ocean of life, needs to make 
more delicate distinctions than the pilot or the 
geographer. Error will present itself in forms so 
like the truth that it is very apt to deceive us, and 
so we need rules which will accept the true and re- 
ject the false. This is the use of all those formulae 
which Logic has drawn out with such care. It is 
intended, not to produce and foster wrangling, but 
to discourage and arrest it, and to show us the way 
by which certainty may be reached. 

V. 

We have now before us the operations of discur- 
sive thought, embracing the Notion, Judgment, and 
Reasoning. The scientific expression of these con- 
stitutes Logic. The science can determine for us 
whether the deductions drawn out by ourselves or 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 39 

others are valid. Let us look for a little at the 
way in which Logic accomplishes this end by the 
laws which it lays down. 

The formation of notions is governed by laws. 
These can be ascertained and enunciated. Deduc- 
tions can be drawn from them. 

From the singular concrete notions we can draw 
others. From an apple before us we can get the 
notion of its taste, its color, its weight, its odor. 
These are abstract notions. Again, from a number 
of apples we can collect them into a class and affirm 
of this object before us that it is an apple. Let us 
understand correctly what is the nature of these 
two notions, the abstract and the concrete. Take 
gravitation — some scientific men all but worship it. 
Let me tell them that gravitation has no existence 
save in the bodies which it draws toward each 
other. Newton, when he discovered the law, looked 
to the bodies in which it acts: to the apple falling 
to the ground, to the moon drawn toward the 
earth. So much for an abstraction ; it exists as an 
attribute in the objects from which it is taken. 

There is a class notion ; there is not only this 
apple which we know by the senses, but there is 
the class apple ; embracing all the apples which 
have ever existed, all the apples which ever shall 
exist, nay, all the apples which children have 



40 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

longed for in their fancies, all the apples which 
poets or painters have drawn. The class has an 
existence, but not an independent one ; it has an 
existence simply in the objects and in the qualities 
which combine them. 

Now certain rules can be laid down as to these 
abstract and general notions. I. The abstract im- 
plies the concrete in which it exists. II. The gen- 
eral implies particular things of which, under the 
bond which connects them, it exists. It is asked, 
what sort of existence have abstract and general 
notions? You hear people say of certain notions 
that they are nonentities ; they are mere abstrac- 
tions. But all abstractions are not nonentities ; 
The love of a mother is not a nonentity — it ex- 
ists in the mother. Virtue, though an abstract 
term, is not a fiction, it exists in all virtuous men 
and women. You tell me that you know by the 
senses what an apple is, but as to the class apple 
it is a fiction. I ask, What makes you put all 
these apples into one class and to recognize an 
apple when you see it ? You must answer that all 
these apples have certain common properties. This, 
then, is the reality in the class. The class verte- 
brate has a reality in the vertebrate column which 
they all possess. III. When the object is real the 
abstract is also a reality in the thing ; when the 



Discursive or Deductive Truth. 41 

things generalized are real the concept which binds 
them is also real. 

VI. 

In the proposition we must carefully Consider 
how the two terms stand toward each other. We 
must particularly inquire what is their extension 
and what their comprehension. In subalternation 
we must see that the species are included in the 
genus. In conversion the rule is that the term be 
not more extensive in the Conclusion than in the 
premise. 

VII. 

In Reasoning Logic teaches us to look to our 
terms. It insists that there be three and only three 
terms: two extremes and a middle which unites 
them. It shows us that they can be put in the form 
of a syllogism if the reasoning is valid. If they can- 
not it is a proof that the reasoning is not valid. 

In all these ways Logic gives us decisive tests to 
show us when our conclusions follow from the 
premises. 

It has so often been explained that it scarcely 
needs to be repeated, that Logic does not give us 
the capacity of reasoning. It proceeds on the idea 
that we reason naturally by the powers which God 
has given us. It shows us what are the exact proc- 



42 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

esses involved and thence formulates rules to guide 
us to truth and save us from error. 

Logic has been called the Grammar of Thought. 
Logic is not the same as Grammar, but it is analo- 
gous to it. Grammar does not profess to teach us 
how to speak or write, but it explains the laws 
involved and teaches how to speak and write cor- 
rectly. So Logic does not claim to give us the 
power of thinking, but it shows us how to think 
accurately, and to correct false reasoning. 

Grammar does not make any man an orator. 
Neither does Logic make man a powerful reasoner. 
But grammar will give every man of ordinary in- 
telligence the power of speaking accurately. Logic 
will not enable every man to reason so consecu- 
tively as Aristotle or the Apostle Paul or Bishop 
Butler, but it will teach every man of common un- 
derstanding to reason clearly and conclusively, and 
thus help him to convince his audience. It is not 
needful that the orator should construe his sen- 
tences as he utters them ; but it may be evident all 
the while that we have the result of a grammatical 
training in these well-constructed sentences. So it 
is not necessary that the pleader should put his 
argument in syllogistic form, but it may be seen at 
every step that he is giving us the result of a 
thorough logical training. 



Inductive Truths. 43 



LECTURE THIRD. 

INDUCTIVE TRUTHS. 

I. 

Scattered Facts. 

AN eminent man is reported as saying that there 
are more false facts than false theories. There 
is truth in this. Facts are apt to have adjuncts to 
them in the reports given by others, and even in 
our own apprehensions of them, or they are so mu- 
tilated that they take an entirely distorted form. 
We all know how, in story-telling, additions and 
subtractions are apt to be made even by honest 
narrators, so as to make it more attractive and 
picturesque. 

The individual facts are primarily made known 
by the senses. In these there may be very numer- 
ous and Complicated details, and any of these if left 
out may so far distort our apprehensions and the 
account we give of them. Besides, sensations, feel- 
ings, fancies, inferences, attachments, and repug- 
nances may mingle with our pure perception of 
sense and cast a glow or a gloom around them. In 
these sections I am showing that we have to guard 



44 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

against these temptations, and that when we do so 
we can arrive at positive truth. 

Observation Proper and Experiment. — These are 
the two ways in which we obtain facts. In the 
former we view objects simply as they present them- 
selves ; in the latter we put them in new positions. 
The advantage of Experiment over Observation 
Proper (which may be so designated as Experi- 
ment is, after all, a kind of Observation) is that it 
enables us to perceive the proper action of the sev- 
eral agencies joined in nature. We wish to know 
whether bodies, whatever be their weight, fall to 
the ground in equal times. Common observation 
seems to show that they do not, as we see the gold 
nugget and the leaf falling at very different times. 
But we put the gold and the leaf into the exhausted 
receiver of an air-pump and find them fall the same 
instant. What we should do in all observation is 
to note precisely what has occurred, and to report 
it accurately — without any additions, subtractions, or 
coloring^; we must be especially on our guard 
against torturing the facts in order to make them 
give a certain kind of testimony. ^ 

THE SENSES. — The older Greek philosophers 
adopted the common opinion that the senses de- 
ceive. The skeptics took advantage of the doctrine 
and argued that if the senses deceive there is 



Inductive Truths. 45 

nothing we can trust in. The sounder philosophers 
met them by calling in reason, which corrected the 
illusions of the senses and conducted to truth. Aris- 
totle corrected both these forms of error, and 
showed that the supposed deception arises, not from 
the senses themselves, but from the use that is 
made of their intimations. 

To save the senses it is necessary to draw certain 
distinctions. In particular we should distinguish 
between our original and derived perceptions. The 
former are intuitive, without any process of infer- 
ence, having the sanction of the author of our con- 
stitution, and never deceiving us. The latter imply 
inferences from the revelations of sense perception, 
and there may be errors in them. 

I believe we can approximately determine what 
are the original perceptions of the various senses. 
By several of the senses we seem to perceive merely 
the bodily organs as affected. This is the case with 
taste and with smell, in which we discern simply the 
palate and the nostrils with a certain sensitive ex- 
pression of the palate and the nostrils. It is the 
same also, I believe, with hearing and with touch 
proper, or feeling, in which we know simply an affec- 
tion of the ear and the periphery of the body. I 
rather think that by the muscular senses and the 
eye we discern more ; a body resisting our organ- 



46 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

ism and a colored surface affecting us. In all these 
intuitive perceptions there is no ratiocination, and 
there are and can be no mistakes. But in all be- 
yond there are inferences, and in these there may- 
be less or more of error. A person tells us that he 
had mutton to dinner, whereas all he knew was that 
there was a certain taste in his mouth which he 
argued was that of mutton. He further lets us 
know that he felt the smell of roses in a certain 
garden, where he also heard a flute playing, whereas 
immediately he felt only an odor in his nostrils and 
a sound in his ear. He is sure that he was struck 
in the dark with a man's hand, whereas the blow 
was from a stick. He depones that he saw a man 
strike his wife, while all he saw was an action of 
one figure upon another, and it turns out that the 
woman was not the man's wife. Hence arise some 
of the mistakes in witness-bearing; they are not lies 
of the senses, but errors in the inferences we draw 
from them. 

In all such cases we form a general rule out of 
certain experiences, and in hasty thinking we ille- 
gitimately apply it. We regard sound as coming 
to our ear in a straight line from the sounding body, 
but the undulations have been reflected from a wall ; 
and we place the bell from which they have come 
in that wall, whereas the belfry is actually in a dif- 



Inductive Truths. 47 

ferent direction. It is on this principle that the 
ventriloquist proceeds when he makes a human 
voice come from a post or an animal. Having laid 
down the rule that when there are few observable 
things between us and an object it must be near, 
we look on that island seen across the sea as much 
closer to us than it is. 

Some other distinctions must be attended to. 
Sensati-ons and feelings of pleasure and pain, of 
beauty and ugliness, associate themselves with all 
our perceptions, and are apt to give a color and 
even a shape to the actual things. We remember 
more particulars about the objects that excite us, 
whether joyously or grievously, than those that are 
dull and commonplace, and we give these a large, 
often an undue, place in our narrative, and thus dis- 
tort them and give them a different meaning. 

The rapid inferences from the intimations of the 
senses may at times serve a good purpose. They 
may prepare us to meet and avoid danger when 
cool and correct argument would not be quick 
enough. A fire-bell, the jolt of a carriage in which 
we are riding, a stumble in walking, the fog-whistle 
at sea may at times raise up an unnecessary alarm, 
but the calm reflection which succeeds will soon 
dissipate this, and at other times they save us from 
danger. 



48 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

We have abundant means of correcting the hasty 
judgments. We have other senses at hand to cor- 
rect the apparent deceptions of one sense. We 
imagine the figures raised optically by magicians to 
be real, but we can dissipate the illusion by thrust- 
ing our hand into the specter. We may mistake 
beef for mutton as we eat it, but it is easy to apply 
to the person who prepared the food to set us right. 
A diseased eye may present objects double, but the 
touch will correct the mistake. In all cases we can 
secure that what is told us by the senses is true by 
judiciously using the means of correction at our 
disposal. 

Self -Consciousness. — Metaphysicians com- 
monly maintain that the revelations of conscious- 
ness are always to be trusted ; that they settle 
every thing in the last resort, and are, in fact, ulti- 
mate and infallible. But there are physiologists, 
and, of a later date, even metaphysicians, who assert 
that the acts of consciousness are variable and often 
deceitful. They show us that people often misap- 
prehend what their real feelings are, and give a 
wrong account of them. It is alleged that there 
are persons who say that they believe certain tenets 
when they do not, only imagining that they do. 
There are cases of persons with a " double con- 
sciousness," as it is called ; remembering, in the one 



Inductive Truths. 49 

state, the experience of that state, but without 
any remembrance of it in the other. 

But in all such cases we attribute to conscious- 
ness what it is not responsible for. In regard to 
the inner, as in regard to external, sense, we have 
to draw distinctions if we would determine their pre- 
cise testimony. It is acknowledged by all psych- 
ologists that, properly speaking, we are conscious 
of self only in its present state. In that state there 
are various affections : there are sensations and feel- 
ings and inferences along with the pure conscious- 
ness, and we are apt to mix them up with each 
other, and thereby breed confusion in our appre- 
hensions and in the account we give of what is in 
our mind. When we review our consciousness we 
are dependent on our memory, and we may omit 
some aspects of our experience and add associated 
affections. Here, as in regard to the bodily senses, 
distance is apt to lend enchantment to the view. 
The hypochondriac magnifies his sorrows, and the 
gay youth his pleasures in the past. People are apt 
to think their youth was happier than it really was ; 
they remember their joys and forget their little dis- 
appointments, which were then felt to be so great 
and now appear so little. 

What is so called is not really " double conscious- 
ness." It arises from a diseased state of the brain 
4 



50 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

hindering physical action. The person is unable to 
recall what has been laid up in the past, and he 
lives in the present and lays up a new experience, 
which he uses in his new state, but which he may 
lose in a later condition of his brain. The man is 
not under a double consciousness, but in two states, 
in each of which the consciousness may be correct. 

It thus appears that man may trust in what his 
consciousness really reveals. It makes known to us 
self in its present state. It should be noticed that 
it does not know merely a quality of self, such as 
thinking or feeling; it knows self as thinking or 
feeling. This is of the nature of a first truth or an 
intuition ; we perceive the very thing. This self 
constitutes what we call personality ; that is, we 
know ourselves as persons. On comparing the self 
as presently known with the past self as then known 
we declare ourselves to be the same. This is per- 
sonal identity ; which is a self-evident, necessary, 
and universal truth. 

Memory. — The vulgar opinion is that the mem- 
ory may deceive. But it does so only as the senses 
deceive. The mistakes are not in the memory 
proper, but in the associated affections and the in- 
ferences drawn from them. We ask a man how 
long it is since he visited us. His recollection is 
dim, and he makes the time longer than it is — six 



Inductive Truths. 51 

years instead of five. It is not possible for him to 
remember his continued existence during these 
years, any more than it is possible for the eye to 
see every point in space between us and objects five 
or six miles off. In both cases he has to avail him- 
self of intervening objects. The event, he remem- 
bers, took place after his marriage, seven years ago, 
for his wife was with him ; and before his mother's 
death, four years ago, for he remembers we made 
inquiries about her health. But he does not recol- 
lect at what precise date between these two occur- 
rences the visit was paid. The reminiscence was 
dim, and he concludes that the event is more dis- 
tant than it really is. Our memories in regard to 
time all need such mile-stones, or rather time- 
marks, to enable us to measure the distances. Now, 
in all these processes there may be mistakes. It is 
much the same with our recollections of the other 
circumstances connected with events, such as the 
shape and color of objects, their position in relation 
to other things, their surroundings, their anteced- 
ents and consequents. The vision is obscure and 
we have to fill it up, and we do so by fancies of our 
own, which so far modify the scene, perhaps per- 
vert it. We are apt to join causes and consequences 
with the bare occurrences. This is especially apt 
to be the case with conversations, with the sentences 



52 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

uttered by ourselves or by others. We recollect 
how we felt, what we meant to say, what effect was 
produced on us by what others said, and we con- 
found these with what was actually uttered. Hence 
the misunderstandings, the perversions which are so 
apt to appear in the reports of conversations. In 
the complicated scenes through which we have to 
pass we remember those parts that have been most 
vivid — these, I suppose, have impressed themselves 
most deeply on our organism, and the others are 
feebler. The consequence is that the record has 
faded in some places, and we make additions in 
order to complete it. In this way we clothe our 
bare memories with dresses which may make them 
look sadder or more joyful than the events really 
were at the time. 

But it is always possible to distinguish between 
our original and proper recollection and our super- 
added and fictitious ones. Those who are consci- 
entious will be careful not to add out of their own 
stores to their memories. When the reminiscence 
is dim they will at once confess it, especially in wit- 
ness-bearing, and when the character of a fellow- 
man may be affected. In all scenes which we wish 
to remember accurately we will take care to note 
the exact incidents at the time they occur. There 
are events of which we are certain that they have 



Inductive Truths. 53 

happened. I might have treated of testimony here 
as it gives us facts to be put under law, but as the 
subject is to be fully treated in Lecture Fifth I re- 
fer it to that place. 

II. 

Induction. 
This consists essentially in gathering facts in 
order to ascertain the order that they follow, which 
will be found to consist in laws which they obey. 
It was known to Aristotle that the mind starts 
with the singular (to kadoTov) before it rises to the 
universal (to nadoXov), which, as he expresses it, 
may be first in the order of nature, while the singu- 
lars are first in the order of time. He practiced the 
method in his natural history, very specially by the 
collections which were supplied by his pupil, Alex- 
ander the Great. But he cannot be said to have sys- 
tematically expounded induction as a method of 
discovering truth. This was reserved for Francis Ba- 
con, who enjoined that in observational science the 
mind should begin with particulars, which are to be 
collected and collated, and then rise to minor, mid- 
dle, and major axioms, and thence finally to causes - 
and forms. All this was to be done not per saltum, 
but by gradual steps. The method has since been 
made more definite by Sir John Herschel, in his 



54 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

Natural Philosophy ; by Dr. Whewell, in his various 
works on The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; 
specially by John S. Mill, in his Logic, and by others. 
The method will become more perfected as science 
advances with its observations and experiments, with 
its instruments and its critical examinations. That 
method has a Means and an End. The Means are 
observation with analysis. The End is the dis- 
covery of laws. 

III. 

Analysis and Synthesis. — By the former we sepa- 
rate a concrete or complex object into its parts. In 
chemistry there is an actual separation of one ele- 
ment from another ; say the oxygen from the hydro- 
gen with which it is combined in water. But in 
most investigations the separation is in thought. 
Thus in all bodies we find both extension and en- 
ergy, which cannot be separated in fact. Thus 
logicians analyze discursive thought into simple ap- 
prehension, judgment, and reasoning, or in the ex- 
pression of these into the term, the proposition and 
argument. The process is performed by abstrac- 
tion, in which we contemplate in thought a part of 
a whole presenting itself, more particularly an at- 
tribute of an object, say gravitation. In analysis 
we separate the whole into its several parts. Ab- 



Inductive Truths. 55 

straction can be performed on every object, as every 
object has more than one quality, and we can fix 
on any one of these. Analysis can be performed 
only when we have such an acquaintance with an 
object as to know all its parts. 

The exercise of abstraction, and, when it is avail- 
able, of analysis, is required in every kind of inves- 
tigation. Bacon speaks of induction commencing 
with " the necessary rejections and exclusions," 
that is, the separating of the matter to be investi- 
gated from the extraneous objects with which it 
may be associated in nature. Whately says {Logic) 
that in teaching a science the analytical mode is 
the more interesting, easy, and natural kind of in- 
troduction, as being the form in which the first in- 
vention or discovery of any kind of system must 
originally have taken place. Whewell gives an apt 
name to the procedure, which he recommends as 
the " Decomposition of Facts." It serves not only 
to separate objects from others, but to break them 
down, so that we may obtain a better acquaintance 
with them — with their internal structure and their 
several qualities. It is a process to be employed 
throughout in all investigations of nature, which in 
every department is full of complexities. 

Analysis can scarcely be described as discovering 
truth. It is rather a means or instrument toward 



56 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

this end. At the same time it should be noticed 
that when we abstract a part, say a quality, from 
an object, the part, the quality, has a reality as well 
as the whole. If the concrete be real the abstract 
is also real. The abstract may not have an inde- 
pendent reality ; thus gravitation has no reality ex- 
cept in body, but it has a reality in body. The 
criterion here is that the part be really a part of the 
actual whole ; that the quality be a real attribute of 
a real thing. 

Analysis is a sharp, and may become a dangerous, 
instrument. It may be over subtle, and dissect and 
kill what should be kept alive and entire. It is ful- 
filling its end only when, to use an illustration of 
Plato's, it is dividing the carcass as the butcher 
does, according to the joints. Among the ancient 
Greek philosophers the analytic was the method 
commonly employed. Down to this last age the 
analytic and the synthetic were represented as 
methods of discovering truth, and had large fields 
allotted to them. Kant's great work, the Critique 
of Pure Reason, is divided into the analytic and 
synthetic parts. 

In synthesis the parts are put together to show 
that they make up the whole. Thus Whately de- 
composes discursive thought into the term propo- 
sition and argument, and then shows synthetically 



Inductive Truths. 57 

that these make up the whole process. Sir John 
Herschel, in his Astronomy, begins with taking up 
the several departments of the heavens, and then 
expounds the whole science. The two, analysis 
and synthesis, must continue to be used as instru- 
ments, but they now do so in the methods of in- 
duction and deduction. 

IV. 
Criteria of Laws. 

Hitherto we have had to do with individual facts, 
which tell us nothing beyond themselves. We have 
not as yet any means of anticipating the future 
from the past, or gathering wisdom from experience. 
In particular we have no science ; which consists, not 
of scattered and isolated facts, but of systematized 
knowledge. In the construction of science we must 
co-ordinate the farts. In doing so we discover the 
laws, and find that all mundane affairs are regulated 
by Yaws.y 

But the question arises, How do we, from indi- 
vidual facts, reach a law? Or, more specifically for 
our present purpose, When are we entitled to con- 
clude and be satisfied that we have found a law 
which may be regarded as general or universal ? 
The answer of those who have not thought specially 
on the subject would be, When we have observed 



58 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

all the facts. But a moment's reflection shows that 
in most cases, I believe in all, we cannot find out 
all the facts. We assert that crows are black, but 
we cannot go the round of the world and ascertain 
that it is so. We may have examined millions of 
cases and found all crows black, but how do we 
know that a traveler may not report that he has 
found a white crow in some distant island? In 
science we say that all mammals are warm-blooded, 
or that all matter attracts other matter inversely 
according to the square of the distance ; but no one 
has searched the universe and noticed every mam- 
mal and every particle of matter so as to be able to 
say that no mammal is cold-blooded, and no particle 
of matter without the power of attraction. But 
from a limited number of observations we can rise 
to a law which seems to be universal. How is it 
so? Mr. Mill maintains that he who can answer 
this question is wiser than the ancients, j* 

Bacon describes the method of observation by 
" perfect Enumeration " of cases as puerile, and in- 
capable of yielding any fruitful results. In induc- 
tion we have to rise from the unknown to the 
known. We argue from a limited number of cases 
in the past to a universal law which we hold to be 
true in the future ; not only so, but in all unknown 
cases, past and present. The father of inductive 



Inductive Truths. 59 

philosophy was aware of the difficulty of the prob- 
lem, and he sought to solve it by bringing in Pre- 
rogative Instances (Prerogatives Inst ant iarnni) which 
could determine what is true of all instances. To 
give only one example, that of Inst 'am 'ia Cruris, the 
metaphor being taken from the notice put up where 
two roads meet to tell which to take. It was dis- 
puted whether light consists of material particles or 
of vibrations in an ether. To settle this it was 
maintained by Fresnel that instances can be arti- 
ficially produced which are inconsistent with the 
material, but not with the undulatory theory. But 
we have now better tests in the Canons of Induction. 
When man looks abroad on nature in a loose way 
he sees a number of scattered facts. At first sight 
it looks as if they have two characteristics ; they 
have both irregularity and they have regularity. He 
soon begins to seek for order in the midst of the 
seeming disorder. He is impelled to this by his in- 
tellectual powers, which prompt him to seek for the 
nature and relation of things. But he is specially 
led into this inquiry by finding that he cannot make 
good and profitable use of nature till he knows how 
it acts. He will not sow grain at one season unless 
he knows that he will reap for his sustenance at an- 
other season. In prosecuting such inquiries he dis- 
covers that order prevails in the midst of apparent 



60 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

confusion. He calls the regular proceedings by the 
name of laws, believing that they are the expres- 
sion of the will of a law-giver. " They continue this 
day according to thine ordinances, for all are thy 
servants." But it is not enough that he knows that 
there are laws. In order to take advantage of them 
he needs to ascertain their precise nature. He 
would determine the number of days in the year, 
the periods of the returns of the seasons and of the 
the moon. While he is seeking after these regu- 
larities he finds that there is a deeper and higher 
law in nature ; there is not only a law of order, there 
is a law of power. Prompted by an internal intu- 
ition, confirmed by a uniform and unvarying ex- 
perience, he concludes, that every event in nature 
has a cause, not only in God, who works in all the 
agents in nature, but in some power in nature. 

The object of all science is to discover order, or, 
in other words, laws. But there is great confusion 
in the statement that all things are governed by laws. 
This will not be cleared up till we distinguish be- 
tween two kinds of laws. The Laws of Uniformity 
and the Law of Causation. 
V. 
I. Laws of Uniformity. 

There is an order in nature, in other words, laws 
in nature which we can observe and profit by with- 



Inductive Truths. 61 

out at all looking to the causes, though we shall see 
that they have causes. They will best be under- 
stood by some examples. There is the succession 
of day and night. Day does not cause night nor 
night cause day. Yet they follow each other in- 
variably. It is the same with the seasons — spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter — no one of which pro- 
duces its successor, though it prepares for it. There 
is the life of the plant — the seed, the blade, the 
flower, the fruit. There is the growth of the ani- 
mal — the germ, the birth, infancy, mature life, decay, 
old age. There are periodical occurrences — the 
trade- winds, the gulf-stream, the evening sea- 
breezes. There are the epochs in geology — the 
Azoic, the Eozoic, the Silurian, the Devonian, the 
Carboniferous, the Mezozoic, the Cenozoic, the Quat- 
ernary, the Human. There are the eras in history — 
as, in Jewish history, the Antediluvian Period, the 
Patriarchal, the Exodus, Government by Judges, 
Government by Kings, the Captivity, the Coming of 
Christ, the Dispersion of the Jews. 

But there is a deeper principle involved. 

VI. 

II. The Law of Cause and Effect. 
I believe this to be an intuitive principle, stand- 
ing the tests above enunciated. I believe that 



62 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

when we discover any thing beginning to be we 
look for an antecedent producing it — a substance 
with power. But without entering at this place on 
this disputed metaphysical subject, I may take it 
for granted that the principle of causation is sanc- 
tioned by a universal experience, and will not be 
denied by any one. Many, indeed, feel that the 
principle may require to be enunciated anew and 
put in a better form since the discovery of the law 
of the Conservation of Energy, or the Persistence 
of Force, as Herbert Spencer calls it. But what- 
ever be the best shape in which to put it, we assume 
in all induction that causes produce their proper 
effect, and that every new product or change in an 
old thing has a cause. One of the aims of induct- 
ive science is to discover what has caused a given 
phenomenon; what has produced it in the past and 
will produce it again. The principle of causation 
might have reigned in all nature and yet there have 
been no uniformity. All action in nature might 
have as its sole cause the fiat of God. The con- 
nection of all things would, in this case, be with 
God, but not with one another. The spring, with 
its buds and blossoms, would be produced by God, 
but this would give no security that the fruits of 
autumn were to follow. Or, again, there might be 
constant interferences by God with the operation of 



Inductive Truths. 63 

natural agents ; or causal agents might work, and 
yet there be no such thing as the general laws, such 
as the seasons, which we observe and trust in. We 
find, instead, that the agents of nature are so dis- 
posed or arranged that they produce uniformities, 
not the result of any one cause, but of a combina- 
tion and harmony of causes ; such as the periodicity 
of the heavenly bodies, the flow of the tides, the 
regular return of the seasons, the plant rising from 
a seed and producing a seed, and the descent of 
the animal from a parent, its growth and its death. 
All these imply causation, but they require more — 
an adjusted causation. 

But it is necessary to settle more definitely what 
is implied in the uniformity of nature which lies at 
the basis of all induction. It implies, first, that 
there is a certain number of agents acting in nature ; 
it is not necessary for us to settle how many. Sec- 
ondly, that these are so collocated or arranged — I 
believe, adjusted — as to produce general results, 
called laws, which we observe and act upon and can 
scientifically express. Thirdly, these agents con- 
stitute nature, and there is no introduction of new 
agents and no interference with them in ordinary 
circumstances. This statement does not preclude 
miracles on rare occasions ; these miracles not being 
contrary to the law of causation, for they have the 



64 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

power of God as a cause, but they are simply an ex- 
ception to the uniformities of nature. These two 
classes differ from each other, yet they are closely 
connected. The laws of uniformity proceed from 
the law of causality. It is the disposition of the 
sun and earth that produces day and night and 
the seasons. There are causes within and without 
the plant and animal which produce development. 
The sea and land breezes have been produced by 
meteorological agencies. 

Canons of Induction.— There seem to be three 
grand ends which men of science have in view in 
their investigations : One is to discover the com- 
position of the objects around us; the second is to 
discover natural classes ; the third is to discover 
causes. 

Canons of Decomposition. — Almost all the ob- 
jects we meet with in the world, whether material 
or mental, are composite. It is the aim of many 
departments of science, in particular of chemistry 
and psychology, to analyze them. This can, so far, 
be effectively done. There are certain rules to 
guide us, and these may be made more and more 
specific as the analytic sciences advance. 

A. We must separate the object we wish to de- 
compose from all other objects. If we wish to ana- 
lyze water we must have pure water, separate from 



Inductive Truths. 65 

all other ingredients. If we wish to analyze intu- 
ition or reasoning, we must separate it from all 
associated observations and fancies. 

B. When we have found the composition of any 
piece or portion of a substance we have determined 
the composition of every other part, and, indeed, 
of the whole. When we have ascertained that a 
pint of water is formed of hydrogen and oxygen we 
have settled that water every-where is composed of 
the same elements. This arises from the circum- 
stance that every substance in nature has its prop- 
erties, which it retains. Having detected these 
properties in one case, we have found what they 
are in all. 

C. The elements reached are to be regarded as 
being so only provisionally. We are not sure that 
in any cases we have found the ultimate elements 
of bodies. At present it is supposed that there are 
some seventy elements, but we are not sure of any 
one of these that it will never be resolved into 
simpler substances. Meanwhile the chemical analy- 
sis is correct so far as it goes. It will always hold 
true that water is composed of oxygen and hydro- 
gen, though it is possible that oxygen or hydrogen, 
one or both, may be resolved into something 
simpler. 

Canons of Natural Classes. — There are certain 



G6 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

sciences which are called by Whewell Classificatory. 
They are such as botany, zoology, and mineralogy. 
We may have two ends in view in classifying. 
One may be simply to aid the memory by having 
the innumerable objects of nature put into a con- 
venient number of groups. For this purpose we 
fix on certain obvious and convenient character- 
istics and put all the objects possessing them into 
one class. It was thus that Linnaeus put under one 
head all plants possessing the same number of sta- 
mens and pistils. This arrangement, though it 
does not come up to the requisitions of a perfect 
classification, is found to be very convenient. Sec- 
ond, our object may be to increase our knowledge 
by so arranging objects that one characteristic may 
be a sign of others. In natural classification we 
should always aim at securing both these ends. 
There are canons which may assist us in determin- 
ing when we have reached natural classes. 

A. We must have observed the resemblance in 
many and varied cases, say in different countries 
and at different times. 

B. We must be in a position to say that if there 
had been exceptions we must have met them. 
These two rules guard against forming a law from 
a limited class of facts. 

C. There are classes in nature called Kinds, in 



Inductive Truths. 67 

which the possession of one quality is a mark of a 
number of others. All classes entitled to be called 
natural are more or less of this description. Thus 
mammals are so designated because they suckle 
their young; but this characteristic is a mark of a 
number of others — that the animals are warm- 
blooded, and have four compartments in their 
hearts. Reptiles are recognized as producing their 
young by eggs, but they are also marked as having 
three compartments in their hearts and being cold- 
blooded. 

Canons of Causes. — The most lucid and, upon the 
whole, the clearest and most satisfactory exposition 
of these methods is by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his 
Logic. It should be noticed that his methods re- 
late to causes, and we have not had from him an 
exposition of the canons of decomposition and 
classes as given above. He mentions four or five 
methods. 

A. The Method of Agreement. — In the spring 
season we see innumerable buds, leaves, and blos- 
soms appearing upon the plants, and we find the 
common cause to be the heat of the sun shining 
more directly upon the earth. The canon is, " If 
two or more effects have only one antecedent in 
common that antecedent is the cause, or, at least, 
part of the cause." That canon is too loose to 



68 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

admit of a universal application, as we may not be 
sure that the point of agreement we have fixed on 
is the only one. Two people take the same dis- 
ease at the same time; we conclude that the cause 
is the same — but it may have been different. 

B. The Method of Difference. — In the very middle 
of the day I find the scene around me on the earth 
suddenly darkened. There must be a cause. I find 
that the moon has come between us and the sun, 
and this seems the only difference between the two 
states — the one in which every thing was bright and 
the other in which it is in gloom. The canon is, 
" If in comparing one case in which the effect takes 
place and another in which it does not take place 
we find the latter to have every antecedent in com- 
mon with the former except one, that one circum- 
stance is the cause of the former, or, at least, part 
of the cause." This method is the one employed 
in cases in which experiment, with its separating 
power, is available. It is the most decisive of all 
tests when the circumstances admit of its applica- 
tion. This canon regulates many cases in common 
life. I am usually in good health, but I took rich 
food yesterday and was unwell, the cause being evi- 
dently the food. A man in health receives a gun- 
shot wound and dies. We see at once that the 
wound was the cause of the death. There are cases 



Inductive Truths. 69 

in which this method is not applicable when an in- 
termediate one is available. 

C. The Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint 
Method of Agreement and Difference. — The canon is, 
" If two or more cases in which the phenomenon oc- 
curs have only one antecedent in common, while two 
or more instances in which it does not occur have 
nothing in common but the absence of that anteced- 
ent, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of 
cases differ is the cause, or part of the cause, of the 
phenomenon." The illustration given by Mr. Mill 
is : " All animals which have a well-developed re- 
spiratory system, and therefore aerate the blood, 
perfectly agree in being warm-blooded, while those 
whose respiratory system is imperfect do not main- 
tain a temperature much exceeding that of the 
surrounding medium ; we may argue from the two- 
fold experience that the change which takes place 
in the blood by respiration is the cause of animal 
heat." There are two countries in much the same 
condition physically, in the one of which there are 
Christian agencies, and in the other none ; in the 
former there is much higher refinement and civil- 
ization than in the latter, and the cause is evidently 
the Christian religion. 

D. The Method of Concomitant Variations. — We 
want to know the cause of the rise of water in a 



10 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

pump or of mercury in a barometer. The ancients 
accounted for this by nature's horror of a vacuum, 
which is inconsistent with the fact that water will 
not rise above a certain number of feet in the pump. 
Torricelli and Pascal gave a better explanation 
when they referred the rising of the water or mer- 
cury to the weight of the incumbent atmosphere, 
which Pascal proved by ascending a mountain with 
a barometer and finding that, as he rose higher and 
higher, the mercury fell lower and lower in the 
tube. Here we have the effect varying with its 
alleged cause, which is an evidence that the alleged 
cause is a true one. The canon is, " Whenever an 
effect varies according as its alleged cause varies, 
that alleged cause may be regarded as the true 
cause, or, at least, as proceeding from the true 
cause." In a certain town there is an increase of 
crime ; at the same time there has been an increase 
of drunkenness, and we at once refer the increase 
of crime to the increase of drunkenness. In the far 
West the manners of the first settlers, being com- 
monly young men, are apt to be rough ; but they 
seek out refined ladies for their wives and their 
manners become refined. In the same region there 
are at first few churches and schools ; these are 
gradually introduced and there is an improvement 
in the morals of the people. 



Inductive Truths. 71 

E. The Method of Residues. — A farmer knows how- 
much grain a particular field has yielded in the past. 
He mixes fertilizers with the earth on the field and 
finds he has a larger crop, and he ascribes the in- 
crease to the fertilizers. He knows what the previ- 
ously existing antecedents will produce, and, after 
subtracting this, he ascribes the residue to the new 
antecedent. The canon is, " Subtract from an 
effect whatever is known to proceed from certain 
antecedents, and the residue must be the effect of 
the remaining antecedents." We know what are 
the orbits in which the planets move, but the planet 
Uranus was found by Leverrier and Adams to de- 
part so far from the laws. There was a residue 
which could not be accounted for, and so they 
looked out for and found a new planet. We may 
proceed on the same principle to argue the exist- 
ence of a conscience. We have a sense of merit 
and demerit ; we find that this cannot be given by 
the senses or intellect, and to explain the phenome- 
non we call in a moral power. 

VIII. 

Psychology. 

Here, as well as in all the physical sciences, we 

have to begin with the observation of facts. There 

is, however, an important difference between the 



72 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

two departments. The facts in physical sciences 
are obtained by the senses ; whereas in mental 
science the observing agent is self-consciousness. 
It is only thus we can find out what any physical 
act is. An examination of the nerves and brain 
may show how a mental state arises, but can give 
no idea of the mental act itself, say of a sensation, 
a recollection, an imagination, of moral approba- 
tion, of emotion or wish. In making conscious- 
ness our witness we have to allot to it a large 
province. We must include in it not only immedi- 
ate introspection, but also the observation of the 
mental acts of others, as disclosed in their words, 
their writings, and their deeds. We cannot, in- 
deed, look directly into the bosoms of our fellow- 
men so as to ascertain what is passing within, but 
we can gather what this is by the expression of it, 
which, be it observed, we can understand because we 
are conscious of our own acts. History, biography, 
travels, plays, novels, newspapers, and especially 
conversation and familiar letters, may all show us 
human nature quite as much as they do external 
incidents. Without these supplements we should 
have a very contracted view of the mind by inspec- 
tion of our own souls. 

The individual facts are made known in this 
way. The criterion of consciousness is in itself; it 



Inductive Truths. IS 

is self-evidencing. As we observe the facts we dis- 
tinguish between those that differ and co-ordinate 
them into laws. The criteria of the laws are much 
the same as those of physical science. 

Psychology proceeds on the same two funda- 
mental principles as physics. It is seeking for 
causes. Without determining the question of the 
freedom of the will we may confidently affirm that 
causation, that the persistence of force, rules in the 
mind as it does in the body. Certain antecedents 
are sure to be followed by certain consequences. 
The orator urges the considerations which may per- 
suade those whom he is addressing and lead them 
to action. The poet raises up images that please 
and elevate the mind. The father and the teacher 
inculcate principles which may guide the young in 
all their future lives. Investigators in this depart- 
ment have been seeking to discover faculties and 
the rule and mode of their operation. The early 
Greeks found sensation, the discursive power, and 
reason. Aristotle had in the soul the nutritive 
power, sensation, memory, phantasy, and, above 
these, the reason, active and passive. In all ages 
there has been a grand distinction drawn, in a loose 
form, between the intellect and the will, the cog- 
nitive and the motive powers. Every body talks of 
the memory, the judgment, of reasoning, and of 



14- The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

sentiment and feeling, of the power of abstract- 
ing, generalizing, distinguishing, of loving, and of 
hating. 

There seem, also, to be laws of uniformity in human 
nature. It does not appear that in the association 
of ideas one idea is the cause of that which succeeds ; 
that when height suggests hollow and the dwarf 
suggests the giant, and prosperity adversity, and a 
portrait the original, that when we count up from 
one to one hundred, there is a causal connection 
between the ideas — they are the joint effect of a 
number of causes. In the science of psychology we 
seek to discover these laws, such as the law of 
habit, the connection between the idea and the feel- 
ing raised by it, the kind of acts which conscience 
approves of. 

Now, there may be criteria of these laws, both of 
causation and uniformity. These have not been so 
carefully enunciated as those of physical science. I 
believe that, mutatis mutandis, they may be con- 
sidered as very much the same. 

The Method of Agreement.— -Washington is named 
and we find the mind following a certain train. We 
think of his education, his training, the Revolution, 
his battles, his character, all of which have been 
previously in the mind together, and we reach the 
law of contiguity: that when ideas have been in the 



Inductive Truths. 75 

mind at the same time, when one comes up the 
others are apt to follow. 

The Method of Difference. — We see a portrait of 
Washington tor the first time. The two, the por- 
trait and Washington, were never before in the 
mind together, yet the portrait calls up Washing- 
ton, and the law is, things that are related, especially 
things that are like, recall each other. 

The Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. — 
There are days in which we find we can easily re- 
call the things we would remember, other days in 
which they will not come up. The difference is in 
the time : that in the first few days our brain was 
in perfect health ; in the other it is distracted. 

Method of Concomitant Variations. — When we 
are interested in an event known to us we are apt 
to think of it more frequently, and we conclude that 
feeling, as a secondary law, influences our associ- 
ations, and, according to the feeling with which it is 
accompanied, so do ideas come up. 

Method of Residues. — On contemplating kind 
actions we feel a pleasure which can be explained 
by our social feelings ; but we find that on contem- 
plating some of these we have a feeling of moral 
approbation. This cannot be explained by the 
mere social feeling, and we have to call in a moral 
principle. 



76 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

IX. 

Reasoning in Induction. 

The question is started, Is there reasoning in in- 
duction ? I am sure that there is. From what 
has been ascertained by observation taken in a 
wide sense we infer something else — that there is a 
law which enables us to predict results. 

How is it that the countryman is enabled to 
predict a coming storm? His father has told him, 
or he himself has observed, that when the wind is 
in the East, and the clouds are thick and black, 
there will probably be rain or wind. Here there is 
evidently inference which can be stated syllogistic- 
ally by the logician, the general observation being 
the major premise, the particular state of the wind 
and sky the minor, and the conclusion that there 
will be a storm. Every class of men, in fact all 
men, do thus reason on premises implied, though 
possibly not expressed. The laborer argues, in his 
own way, that there should be a rise of wages ; the 
merchant purchases because he concludes there will 
be a demand for his goods. Before there were any 
precise rules laid down on the subject scientific 
men drew true and important conclusions from 
common-sense principles in their own mind. The 
canons of induction now expressed definitely enable 



Inductive Truths. 77 

us to put the reasoning in a more systematic form, 
which is a great advantage. We can now use the 
canons of induction (which, I believe, will become 
more definite and better expressed) as our majors 
in the syllogism of induction. 

Major. When two or more effects have only one 
antecedent in common, that antecedent is the cause. 

Minor. But the budding of innumerable plants in 
spring has only one common antecedent — the re- 
turn of the sun to a higher altitude. 

Conclusion, this one antecedent is the cause. 

This is the method of agreement. Let us take a 
case from method of concomitant variations. 

Major. Where an effect varies with its supposed 
cause this is the true cause. 

Minor. But the rising and falling of the mercury 
in the thermometer varies with the less or greater 
weight of the superincumbent atmosphere. 

Conclusion, the weight of the atmosphere is there- 
fore the cause of the rise or fall of the barometer. 

It should be observed that the canons, with their 
implied reasoning, do not guarantee to us absolute 
certainty, what is called apodictic truth or dem- 
onstration. None of these are certified, as first 
truths are, by the law of necessity ; we can easily 
conceive any one of the ordinary physical laws not 
to be true universally, and we might believe so, 



78 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

provided we had evidence. The evidence, after all, 
is merely a probability of a lower or higher degree, 
but may rise to a certainty only a little short of 
being absolute, and quite sufficient to justify us to 
put trust in it and act upon it in ordinary, indeed 
in all, circumstances. Such, for instance, is the 
proof which we have in favor of the law of gravita- 
tion. It is not demonstrative, like a mathematical 
truth, but it satisfies the mind and is verified by 
constant observation. 



The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. 19 



LECTURE FOURTH. 

THE JOINT DOGMATIC AND DEDUCTIVE METHOD. THE 
JOINT INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE. HYPOTHESES AND 
VERIFICATION. CHANCE. INDUCTION CANNOT GIVE 
ABSOLUTE TRUTH. WE KNOW IN PART. 

I HAVE explained the three ways by which we 
investigate truth ; the Intuitive, the Deductive, 
and the Inductive. I am now to join these three 
and explain the methods which ensue. 

I. 

The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. 

In this method we assume a principle and draw 
an inference from it. The principle may be a self- 
evident one, or it may be obtained from a gathered 
experience. The best example is found in geom- 
etry, where, at the opening, there are laid down defi- 
nitions of such things as triangles, circles, squares, 
and also axioms or self-evident truths ; and from 
these, and as involved in them, we get further truths 
by deductive reasoning. We have also examples 
in Formal Logic, as when the dictum of Aristotle 
is assumed, that whatever is true of a class is true 



80 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

of the members of the class, and from this get the 
modes and figures of reasoning and innumerable 
inferences. The truths thus drawn are called ap- 
podictic by Aristotle, and demonstrative by the 
moderns. Or the assumed principle may be ob- 
tained from a collected induction, such as the law 
of light that the angle of reflection is equal to the 
angle of incidence, from which may be drawn a large 
body of conclusions. 

This method has often been applied illegiti- 
mately, that is, to departments which have to deal 
with scattered facts. In the seventeenth century, 
when mathematics made such a start, there were 
attempts to carry the geometrical method into all 
branches of science. It was used by Descartes and 
his extensively ramified school in philosophy, and 
also in theology. Assuming the existence of 
thought, of cogito, as a truth which cannot be 
doubted, he thence proves his own existence, which 
it would have been wise in him to assume; and 
then, from the idea of the infinite and the perfect 
in the mind, he argued that there must be a perfect 
being existing, whose veracity guarantees our idea 
of matter. 

Samuel Clarke, finding that man could not get 
rid of the idea of space and time, argued that, since 
all thingrs must either be substances or modes, and 



The Joint Dogmatic and Deductive Method. 81 

as space and time are not substances, they must 
be modes of a substance, which is God, whom, by 
other considerations, he clothes with benevolence. 
In these connected systems doubtful definitions 
were carried out, often by right reasoning, to very 
doubtful results. 

I may refer particularly to the wrong applica- 
tion which was made of this method by Spinoza, 
the Dutch Jew designated expressively by Du- 
gald Stewart " the thought-bewildered man." In 
his Ethics, beginning with a formidable array of 
definitions, axioms, postulates, and corollaries, he 
draws out a philosophical religious system in which 
God is at once extension and thought, and being 
THE All is the moral evil in the world as well as 
the good ; is, in fact, the deceit, the hypocrisy, the 
adultery, as well as the true, the upright, the holy. 
A number of powerful German thinkers, metaphy- 
sicians, and theologians, toward the end of last 
century, became greatly enamored with the panthe- 
ism of Spinoza, and several of them drew out sys- 
tems of much the same kind. All agreed in pro- 
ceeding a, priori in deducing results from favorite 
principles. They all drew much from, indeed, pro- 
ceeded upon, favorite fundamental principles, and 
drew out imposing systems all more or less idealistic 
and pantheistic. The ablest of the speculators were 



82 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

Fichte, Schelling, culminating, and, it is to be hoped, 
terminating, in Hegel. They have been followed 
by several dozen others, such as Herbart, Lotze, 
and, we may add, Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, 
all of whom adopt some new principle and carry it 
out in the same way. The newest form is Neo-Kant- 
ism, which, however, can never reach the truth till 
it abandon certain fundamental principles of Kant, 
such as that we perceive mere phenomena in the 
sense of appearances, instead of things ; and that the 
mind adds forms to things when it perceives them. 
These systems have had their day, which, it is 
hoped, is now coining to a close. It is hoped that 
they will never become the prevailing philosophies 
in England, France, and America. In Germany 
they have buried beneath them some of the simple 
truths of Scripture and natural piety. The funda- 
mental objection to the method is that it is not 
applicable to the sciences, which have to deal with 
facts. The method is a powerful one when we have 
the legitimate means of using it, that is, self-evident 
truth. But it is not available when we have to observe 
and co-ordinate the facts of nature within and with- 
out us. Our philosophic physicists are quite aware 
of this. Our metaphysicians should acknowledge 
the same truth. " A clever man," says Herschel, 
" shut up alone and allowed unlimited time, might 



The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 83 

reason out for himself all the truths of mathematics 
by proceeding from those simple notions of space 
and number of which he cannot divest himself 
without ceasing to think. But he could never tell, 
by any effort of reasoning, what would become of a 
lump of sugar if immersed in water, or what im- 
pression would be left on his eye by mixing the 
colors of yellow and blue." {Natural Philosophy, 67.) 

II. 

The Joint Inductive and Deductive 
Method. 

J. S. Mill argues that more progress will now be 
made, even in observational sciences, by deduction 
than by induction. This may be doubted. It seems 
to me that observation and experiment must always 
be the surest way of advancing research. But deduc- 
tion may be joined to induction. When this is done 
the method may be called the Joint Inductive and 
Deductive. This is, in fact, the method represented 
by Mr. Mill as conducting to such fruitful results. 

In this method the inquirer begins in the induct- 
ive method ; that is, he observes facts with care and 
with the view of discovering a law. As he pro- 
ceeds he will ever be asking whether the law is so 
and so ; that is, devising an hypothesis. In order 
to determine whether this is a true law of nature 



84 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

he has to examine further facts ; it may be, facts of 
a different kind. As he acts thus he may find he 
can apply deduction. He inquires what effects 
follow from the law in his mind, and he then com- 
pares these with the facts. If he finds these to 
correspond he has a verification of his hypothesis. 
It is by combining the two in this way that the 
greater number of the established laws of nature 
have been discovered. In most cases there have 
been long processes, both of induction and deduc- 
tion, before the law has been ascertained and ad- 
justed. When the laws of nature are quantitative, 
as they commonly are, mathematics maybe applied 
to them, and it becomes the instrument of the de- 
duction ; and often a far-reaching one — showing 
very distant consequences which can be compared 
with facts. 

In the sciences of observation sometimes the in- 
ductive element and sometimes the deductive 
method is the more prominent ; in all cases the in- 
ductive, as I reckon, is the essential. In Galileo's 
researches experiment was the main instrument, 
but he also used mathematics. Kepler's fertile 
mind was always devising hypotheses, but he ac- 
cepted them only as they were confirmed by obser- 
vations. It would be wrong to say that Newton's 
method was mere induction. He had before him 



The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 85 

the observations of Galileo and Kepler, and also a 
measurement of the distance of the earth's surface 
from the center, and he applied a powerful mathe- 
matics, created by himself, to these facts. It is a 
circumstance greatly to his credit that when, hav- 
ing a wrong measurement of the distance of the 
earth's circumference from its center, he found his 
theory, that the moon was held in her sphere by the 
same power as draws an apple to the ground, not 
to be in accordance with facts he gave it up for a time, 
and only resumed it when it was found, on the 
proper distance of the earth's surface being ascer- 
tained, that the facts corresponded. In all depart- 
ments of physics or natural philosophy the deduct- 
ive mingles with the inductive. In optics, in 
thermotics, in theoretical astronomy, in mechanics, 
the deductive or mathematical element has a con- 
spicuous place ; but in all these sciences we have 
always to start with observed facts. In ethics we 
carry out indefinitely the laws of our moral nat- 
ure; but these have been ascertained by a previous 
observation of that nature. In like manner, in 
logic we deduce consequences from the laws of 
discursive thought, which we have found by ob- 
serving how they act in the mind. In all the social 
sciences there is a mixture of the two elements, 
sometimes one and sometimes the other being 



86 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

predominant. Jurisprudence is forever appealing 
to fundamental principles, and inquiring how they 
apply to a given case. The science of national 
wealth must be constructed mainly by the observa- 
tion and collection of facts in statistical and other 
forms; but there are universally operating prin- 
ciples ever called in. Thus it is supposed that men 
are usually swayed by a desire to promote their in- 
terest so far as they know it. This is certainly a 
powerful motive. But there are others, such as the 
desire for fame, for power, for society, for the beau- 
tiful, for promoting education and religion, all 
actuating individuals, and the influence may be 
traced in the progress of nations. In chemistry the 
laws have to be ascertained by observation, partic- 
ularly by experiment ; but when principles have 
been discovered, such as that of affinity, they may 
be carried out indefinitely. Psychology, as a science, 
is constructed mainly by the observations of con- 
sciousness ; but, having ascertained certain laws, 
such as those of the association of ideas, we can ex- 
plain how they affect our beliefs and feelings. In 
pedagogics, or the science of teaching, we must 
carefully observe the ways of children ; but in doing 
so we discover their actuating motives, such as the 
love of knowledge, the love of play, the love of ap- 
probation, which have to be taken into account in 



The Joint Inductive and Deductive Method. 87 

constructing our methods of instruction and dis- 
cipline. In aesthetics there are ascertained laws of 
taste which must be taken along with us in the con- 
struction of the science. In all departments of 
natural history observation must play the most im- 
portant part, but there are laws of life and of form 
to guide biologists in all their investigations. 

The principles from which we deduce conclusions 
are of two kinds. Some are self-evident or demon- 
strative. Such are moral laws and maxims. These 
are assumed, and are applied extensively and con- 
stantly in history and in all the social sciences ; in 
all sciences which deal with motives and character. 
Of this description is the maxim that men are likely 
to be happy and comfortable when they are moral. 
To this same class belong all mathematical propo- 
sitions founded on axioms. These self-evident 
truths are seldom formally enunciated ; they are 
simply assumed and applied. So far as science 
uses them it is very much employing the Joint Dog- 
matic and Deductive Method. But there is a second 
kind of principles used in deduction even more ex- 
tensively ; these are acknowledged truths and wise 
laws established by a large induction. For ex- 
ample, any one may now assume the law of gravi- 
tation. In optics it is allowed that the angle of 
reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, and 



88 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

from this a great many particular truths may be 
drawn. In chemistry it is taken for granted that 
the elements combine in certain proportions, and 
from this a multitude of consequences follow. 

In this joint method the induction is tested by 
the canons of induction and the deduction by the 
rules of reasoning. 

III. 

Hypotheses and Verification. Consilience 
of Inductions. 
" Hypotheses non jingo" said Newton, meaning, 
perhaps, that he introduced no fictitious agency, 
but merely vercz causa, such as existed in nature ; 
or, more probably, that he accepted no truth till it 
was established. Since Newton's time, especially 
within the last age, hypotheses have played a very 
important part in all departments in which the laws 
have not been settled, as, for example, in electricity 
and biology. The investigator is bent on knowing 
what laws certain phenomena follow. But in nature 
divers agents are mixed up with one another, and 
we cannot determine what they are by a loose in- 
spection. As he observes tentatively, he makes a 
supposition suggested by the facts as to what the 
law should be. When he notices the descent of 
plants and animals he says to himself, Let us sup- 



Hypotheses and Verification. 89 

pose the law to be that of development or heredity. 
Me has now a specific end to work for, and he ob- 
serves and collects facts, and inquires whether they 
agree with the hypothesis he has formed. If he 
finds that many of them do so he has a probability, 
and is encouraged to proceed ; and if the hypothe- 
sis explains a large body of events it rises to the 
rank of a theory. When it takes in all the facts 
bearing on the particular case, and no exceptions 
can be discovered, it is regarded as a law of nature, 
which, however, may require to be modified and 
adjusted before it suits all the facts, and so be- 
comes the true law. This process is called 

The Verification of Hypotheses. — When first sug- 
gested the supposition may have little to support 
it, and there may seem to be facts opposed to it. 
But if it is the correct one there will come confir- 
mations from a variety of quarters, difficulties will 
disappear, and the seeming exceptions may corrob- 
orate it. The hypothesis started is that light con- 
sists in vibrations, not a very probable supposition 
beforehand, but then it is found to explain one set 
of phenomena after another, till at last it seems to 
account for every thing, and is counted as an es- 
tablished law. Or the hypotheses is that of the 
conservation of energy, or that the amount of 
energy in the world, real and potential, cannot 



90 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

be increased or diminished. On the first con- 
sideration of this view obvious objections will 
present themselves. We strike with a hammer 
upon a piece of iron till our strength is exhausted, 
and it looks as if force had been expended and lost. 
But, on further inquiry, we detect the energy that 
had gone out of the body to be conserved in the 
molecular motion or heat of the metal. 

Hypotheses, I rather think, must be resorted to 
in the early stages of the investigation of every sort 
of phenomena. They are simply tentatives, and 
most of them may have to be abandoned. They 
may or they may not be announced ; they may in 
the first instance be simply guesses, and only a 
few or one of them prosecuted to any great extent. 
The law of gravitation was, for a time, only an hy- 
pothesis, taking the erroneous form that matter 
attracts other matter, not according to the square of 
the distance, which is the true law, but according to 
the distance. Hypotheses are necessary, but are 
to be carefully watched and limited. 

First. — The hypothesis must be suggested by the 
facts and not be feigned by the mind ; this may be 
the meaning of Newton's statement. 

Second. — It must be regarded as a mere hypothe- 
sis till it is established by the criteria applicable to 
the department. We are much troubled in the 



Hypotheses and Verification. 91 

present day by hypotheses being represented as 
established laws. 

Third. — The hypothesis is to be abandoned when 
it is found that there are facts inconsistent with it. 
It requires much courage to abandon an hypothesis 
which has long been cherished, and, perhaps, pub- 
lished to the world. 

Fourth. — It is established as a law when it ex- 
plains all the phenomena bearing on the subject 
and is not contradicted by any known fact. 

It is a powerful confirmation of an hypothesis 
when it enables us to predict occurrences. If the 
alleged law be the true one the facts will correspond 
to it in the future as in the past, and as they fall 
out will tend to prove that the hypothesis is a 
sound one. Dr. Whewell has shown that the evi- 
dence in favor of our induction is of a much higher 
and more forcible character when it enables us to 
explain and determine cases of a kind different 
from those which were contemplated in the forma- 
tion of our hypothesis. " Thus it was found by 
Newton that the doctrine of the attraction of the 
sun varying according to the inverse square of the 
distance, which explained Kepler's third law, of the 
proportionality of the cubes of the distances to the 
squares of the periodic times of the planets, ex- 
plained, also, his first and second laws, of the ellip- 



92 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

tical motion of each planet, although no connection 
of these laws had been visible before. Again, it 
appeared that the force of universal gravitation, 
which had been inferred from the perturbations of 
the moon and planets by the sun and by each 
other, also accounted for the fact, apparently alto- 
gether dissimilar and remote, of the precession of 
the equinoxes." He designates this process as the 
Consilience of Inductions. Fie declares: " No ex- 
ample can be pointed out in the whole history of 
science, so far as I am aware, in which this consili- 
ence of inductions has given testimony in favor of 
an hypothesis afterward discovered to be false." 

IV. 
Chance. 

In one sense there is and can be no such thing as 
chance ; that is, an event without a cause or without a 
purpose. Every occurrence has a cause in God. Not 
only so, but in the ordinary affairs of this world it 
has a mundane cause. Further, it falls out accord- 
ing to the uniformity of nature. 

But there are senses in which there is chance in 
our world. The oldest definition of chance (rvxv) 
was by Anaxagoras, who makes it an event whose 
cause cannot be discerned by human reason 
(Xoyiafiu)). This account needs only to be a little 



Chance. 93 

expanded and made more definite. There are oc- 
currences of which the cause or the law is unknown, 
and, in consequence, we cannot anticipate their oc- 
currence. This may arise from the cause being 
utterly unknown to us. More frequently it arises 
from the complexity of nature, from there being a 
number of agents working, or from the nature of 
their operation. We may know all the agencies at 
work, but we cannot tell how they are working. In 
all cases the events do not recur with such regu- 
larity as to constitute a law. There was a time 
when eclipses were regarded as coming according 
to no law, and men, following the law of causality, 
referred them to a deity. When these causes were 
discovered they were found to have periods, and 
astronomers could predict their recurrence, and 
they were viewed in a different light. Till lately 
meteors were supposed to appear capriciously, but 
now showers of them are expected at certain sea- 
sons of the year, and nobody ascribes them to 
chance. When we shake a die in a dice-box we 
are acquainted with the mechanical law which it 
obeys in its movements, but we cannot say which 
side will cast up. We know, in a general way, 
what physiological agencies produce death, but we 
cannot predict at what precise time any man 
will die. 



94 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

Still, even in such cases, a certain kind and 
amount of truth may be had, and this from the 
circumstance that the event proceeds, after all, 
from causes which operate regularly, and from there 
being a limited number of causes. We find that, 
given a sufficient number of trials, each side of the 
die will come up the same number of times ; if any 
side comes up more frequently than another we 
argue that the dice have been loaded. We do not 
know when any one man will die, but we can ascer- 
tain what number of people will die in a given time 
in a community. 

In such cases we can strike an average, and we 
can foretell average results and estimate the prob- 
ability of a given event. When we speak of the 
probability of an occurrence we are not to under- 
stand this as implying the uncertainty of the occur- 
rence considered in itself. The event, say the 
death of a person on a certain day, may be abso- 
lutely sure, owing to causes operating. We can 
conceive that there are higher intelligences to 
whom it would not be uncertain. We are sure that 
it would not be so to the view of the Omniscient. 
It is so to us because of the limited nature of our 
faculties and of our knowledge of the causes oper- 
ating. Were we cognizant of all the antecedent 
circumstances we might, in many cases, be able to 



Chance. 95 

predict the result. It is because of our ignorance 
that the event is uncertain to us. The probability 
or improbability is not in the event, but in the 
grounds which we have for expecting it ; it is sub- 
jective and not objective. 

In all cases we must have certain data, gained by 
observation and yielding a general average. In 
some departments we can express numerically the 
probability or improbability of the particular oc- 
currence. An event reckoned impossible may be 
represented by o; an event certain to happen, by I. 
All degrees of probability may be denoted by the 
fractions representing value from zero to one. The 
probability of an uncertain event is represented 
by the number of chances favorable and unfavor- 
able. Thus the casting up of ahead or a tail being 
I, and the chances against it being 2, the proper 
chance is one half. The tables that have been pre- 
pared for life insurance companies have been very 
elaborate, but need not here be given. 

There is another sense in which it may be said 
that there is such a thing as chance. There cannot 
be an occurrence without a purpose on the part of 
God, who has ordered the causes producing it. But 
there may be a concurrence without a design. It 
is by chance that certain rocks take the form of the 
face of Napoleon or Wellington. I do not know 



96 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

that there was any purpose designed or effected by 
so many men of genius being born in the year 1769, 
or by Cervantes dying on the same day as Shake- 
speare died. There are certain minds that take 
the keenest interest in observing such coincidences, 
and discover a deep meaning in what is in itself 
meaningless; for example, connecting a calamity 
with the spilling of salt at a table, or from thirteen 
persons meeting at that table. On the other hand, 
when there is an immense congregation of agents 
that are independent, to produce an evident benev- 
olent end — for instance, of vibrations of light, of 
coats and humors, of rods and cones, to enable us 
to see through the eye — there is evidence of design, 
the chances being all against such a concurrence. 

V. 

Natural Theology. 
Attempts have been made to conduct this science 
on the joint dogmatic and deductive method, but, 
in my opinion, without much success. It has to 
deal with facts — the existence of God, and the im- 
mortality of the individual soul — and, therefore, 
must have an inductive or observational element. I 
have my doubts whether, from a mere idea or prin- 
ciple in the mind, we can argue the existence of the 
living God. It should proceed, I reckon, mainly in 



Natural Theology. 97 

the joint inductive and deductive method. It looks 
at God's works within and without us, and, discover- 
ing wonderful mutual fittings, means and end, traces 
of love and just government, it rises to the belief in 
a being of power, wisdom, benevolence, and justice. 
The inductions are collected in such works as Ray's 
Wisdom of God, in Paley's Natural Theology, in the 
Bridgewater Treatises, and the ordinary works of 
natural religion. 

But there are deductive processes involved. The 
premises here are supplied mainly by a priori prin- 
ciples or by intuition, all to be justified by the cri- 
teria of First Truths. In the mind of man there are 
high and deep truths in the germ, all capable of 
being developed and actually working in the mature 
man, being called forth by the circumstances in 
which he is placed. There is the principle of 
causation, requiring us, on a new thing or a change 
appearing, to seek for a cause. This can stand the 
tests of intuition, being self-evident, necessary, uni- 
versal, in our very nature and constitution ; and it 
leads us to believe that where there are traces of 
design there must be a designer. There is a moral 
power within us, with its law and its obligations, 
implying a law-giver. We have not an adequate 
idea of infinity, but we believe that there is some- 
thing beyond our widest idea or concept, something 



98 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

to which nothing can be added, and we are led to 
apply it to the powerful, the good and holy One. 

We are entitled, we are required, to trust and 
follow these principles. They are elements, and the 
highest elements^ of the reason with which we are 
endowed. We begin with trusting the senses, and 
find, as we do so, constant confirmations in our daily 
experience ; what appeared at first to be realities 
we discover to be more real as we bring one sense 
after another to bear upon them, and find that meat 
nourishes us and pure air refreshes us, and the due 
use of the good things of this world prolongs life. 
We should confide in the same way in our higher 
ideas and beliefs, and as we do so we find them ex- 
panding and elevating the mind, opening grand 
vistas which look beyond the seen and temporal 
into the unseen and eternal. If we do not follow 
our lower instincts, if we do not eat and drink, our 
bodies will become feeble and die ; and if we deny 
our higher reason our souls will lose their freshness, 
vigor, and aspirations. 

But when we would construct the argument, 
indeed, in all scientific investigations and in all true 
philosophy, we must be careful to ascertain the 
exact nature of the intuitions or intuitive reason we 
call in, and only use them accordingly. Those who 
neglect this are sure to present them in an extrav- 



Natural Theology. 99 

agant form or make a perverted use of them. This 
has been done by the mystics of the East and of 
mediaeval times, indeed, of all ages. Almost always 
they have got a glimpse of a reality, but they have 
seen it only under partial aspects, and they have 
shown it to us through a cloud, or irradiated it with 
reflected light, and have represented it to us as 
vision, inspiration, and ecstasy, whereas it is only 
one of the higher elevations of our nature. 

All our profound thinkers have seen these truths, 
but have not always properly represented them. We 
may hold with Plato that there is a grand, indeed, 
a divine, Idea ; but I wish that idea, as in the mind, 
carefully examined and its forms or law exactly de- 
termined, and it is for inductive science, and not 
speculation, to tell us what are the types which 
represent it in nature. I hold with Aristotle that 
there are formal and final, as well as material and 
efficient, causes in nature ; but it is for a careful in- 
duction to determine the nature of these and to 
show how matter and force are made to work for 
order and for ends. I am as sure as Descartes, and 
as Augustine and Anselm were before him, that 
there is in the mind a germ of the idea of the in- 
finite and perfect ; but we must show what is the 
precise nature of the idea, so as to secure that we 
draw only legitimate inferences from it. I discover, 



100 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

as Leibnitz did, a pre-established harmony in nature, 
but it consists mainly, not in things acting inde- 
pendently of each other, but in the harmony pro- 
duced by things acting on each other. I attach as 
much importance to experience as Locke did, but I 
maintain that observation discovers that the intu- 
ition (which he acknowledged) looks at principles 
in the mind prior to all experience. I allow to Kant 
his forms, his categories, and his ideas, but their 
nature is to be discovered, not by criticism, but by 
induction, when they will be found not to superin- 
duce qualities on things, but simply to enable us to 
perceive what is in things. I believe with Schelling 
in intuition (Ansckauung), but it is an intuition 
viewing realities. I hold with Hegel that there is 
an Absolute ; but I believe that our knowledge, 
after all, is finite, implying an infinite, and that the 
doctrine can be enunciated so as not to issue in pan- 
theism. I turn away with scornful aversion from 
the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, 
but I believe they have done good by calling at- 
tention to the existence of evil, to remove which is 
an end worthy of the labors and suffering of the 
Son of God. I believe, with Herbert Spencer, in a 
vast unknown above, beneath, and around us; but 
I rejoice in a light shining in the darkness and re- 
vealing the known. I believe in the gems so rich 



Limits to Human Knoiuledge. 101 

and varied which the higher poets have left us as a 
rich inheritance ; but before they can enter into 
philosophy they must be cut and set, and it will re- 
quire a skillful hand to adjust them, and when they 
are cut it must be as skillfully as diamonds are, and 
this only to show more fully their form and beauty. 

VI. 

Limits to Human Knowledge. 

The aim of this treatise has been to show that the 
human mind is capable of reaching knowledge, and 
that it has tests to determine when it has done so. 
I have faced the agnostic, but have not entered into 
a wrestling with him, which would be endless, 
because he refuses to take a form by which I may 
lay hold of him. I have pursued a more effectual 
method. I have shown objects where he assures us 
that there is nothing. It is in this way we can com- 
mand assent and gain assurance. 

I have proceeded on the idea that there is a dif- 
ference in the certitude of truths. Some I have 
shown are self-evident, necessary, and universally 
held, and therefore certain beyond doubt or dispute; 
others are only probable, some with only a slight 
balance in their favor, others rising to certainty. 
This is not so much a difference in the truths as a 
difference in the evidence to us. To God and to 



102 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

higher beings, the one kind may be as certain as the 
other. We cannot tell whether there will or will 
not be a good harvest next year. But to Omniscience 
it may be as certain that there is to be a good 
harvest as that all the angles of a triangle are equal 
to two right angles. It is of vast moment that we 
should know what kind of evidence we have, and 
what the validity of the evidence which we have in 
favor of any proposition we are required to believe, 
whether it is demonstrative or merely probable, and 
if only probable what the degree of probability. It is 
also of moment that we should note what kind of 
truth admits of apodictic and what of only probable 
proof. It is vain to seek for demonstration in every 
kind of investigation. We can have such, as I 
reckon, only when we have self-evident truth. But, 
then, it can be shown that inductive truth can rise 
to certainty. I doubt much whether we have im- 
mediate evidence of the existence of God as we have 
of the existence of ourselves, but we have quite as 
valid proof of the existence of God as we have of 
the existence of our fellow-men. In both we have a 
fact, the acts done, and we rise up by the principle 
of causation to a cause. The criteria of truth which 
I have been furnishing should assist us in all such 
investigations. 

Man's knowledge is increasing and must continue 



Limits to Human Knowledge. 103 

to increase. His generalizations widen as his 
knowledge increases and take in more and more ob- 
jects. He is constantly gaining more premises which 
lead to farther conclusions. One discovery leads on 
to another ; one chamber opened shows us the door 
which opens into a second. Davy proved the cor- 
relation of electric and magnetic forces ; Oersted of 
electric and magnetic, and at last the grand doctrine 
disclosed itself to a number of investigators, partic- 
ularly to Mayer, that all the physical forces are cor- 
related. 

But man's power of discovering truth is, and ever 
must be, limited. First, there are limits to his 
mental powers. He has only five original inlets of 
knowledge into the material world. Had he fifty 
senses instead of five he might know vastly more. 
Then, his power of working on the materials re- 
quired by sense and consciousness, his memory and 
his understanding are also limited. Some men can 
discover more truth than others, and it is conceiv- 
able that there may be higher intelligences who see 
farther into the nature of things than the most far- 
sighted of men. Secondly, every man's individual 
experience is limited, and the same may be said of 
the experience of the race — it is confined within very 
stringent bounds. 

Man can discover a vast amount of truth, spec- 



104 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

ulative and practical. We have enough revealed to 
exercise our faculties, to expand and elevate the 
mind, and to serve for all the purposes of the duty 
we owe to God, to ourselves, and our fellow-men. 
Every truth known leads however into the unknown. 
But this is to tempt us to penetrate into the un- 
known region that we may know it. 

As we do so we shall find that there are things 
beyond our ken in a region beyond, above, or 
beneath us, and we must be content to allow them 
to lie there. We know as much as to know that 
there are truths which we cannot know. We see the 
objects within our proper range of vision, but we also 
see the darkness that encompasses them. " We know 
in part." Yes, Ave know, but we know only in part. 

We who dwell in a world " where day and night 
alternate ;" we who go every-where accompanied by 
our own shadow — a shadow produced by our dark 
body, but produced because there is light — cannot 
expect to be absolutely delivered from the darkness. 
Man's faculties, exquisitely adapted to the sphere 
in which he moves, were never intended to enable 
him to comprehend all truth. The mind is in this 
respect like the eye. The eye is so constituted as 
to perceive things within a certain range, but as 
objects are removed farther and farther from us they 
become more indistinct, and at length are lost sight 



Limits to Human Knowledge. 105 

of altogether. It is the same with the intellect of 
man. It can penetrate a certain distance and un- 
derstand certain subjects, but as they stretch away 
farther they look more and more confused, and at 
length they disappear from the view. And if the 
human spirit attempts to mount higher than its 
limited range it will find all its flights fruitless. 
The dove, to use a well-known illustration of Kant's, 
may mount to a certain height in the heavens ; but 
as she rises the air becomes lighter, and at length 
she finds that she can no longer float upon its bosom, 
and should she attempt to soar higher her pinions 
flutter in emptiness and she falters and falls. So it 
is with the spirit of man : it can wing its way a 
very considerable distance into the expanse above 
it, but there is a boundary which if it attempts to 
pass it will find all its conceptions void and its 
ratiocinations unconnected. 

Placed as we are in the center of boundless space 
and in the middle of eternal ages, we can see only 
a few objects immediately around us, and all others 
fade in outline as they are removed from us by 
distance, till at length they lie altogether beyond 
our vision. And this remark holds true not only of 
the more ignorant, of those whose eye can penetrate 
the .least distance, it is true also of the learned — it 
is perhaps true of all created beings — that there is a 



106 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

bounding sphere of darkness surrounding the space 
rendered clear by the torch of science. Nay, it 
almost looks as if the wider the boundaries of science 
are pushed, and the greater the space illuminated 
by it, the greater in proportion the bounding sphere 
of darkness into which no rays penetrate ; just as (to 
use a very old comparison) when we strike up a 
light in the midst of darkness, in very proportion as 
the light becomes stronger so does also that surface 
dark and black which is rendered visible. 



Testimony. 107 



LECTURE FIFTH. 

TESTIMONY. IS IT SUFFICIENT TO PROVE THE SUPER- 
NATURAL? 

I. 

IT is not necessary to suppose, with some of the 
Scottish metaphysicians in their answers to 
Hume's argument against miracles, that there is an 
original instinct or principle of common sense leading 
us to trust in testimony. I believe, indeed, that 
there is a social instinct in all of us inclining us to 
have an affection for, and trust in, those we meet 
with, especially in father and mother, brothers and 
sisters, and leading us to believe in what they say. 
But the belief in testimony is the result of experi- 
ence, and is modified by experience ; we trust in 
certain testimonies, but not in others. There is a 
conscience in every man which disposes him, if he 
does not resist it, to speak truly ; even selfishness 
prompts him not to lose the confidence of his fel- 
low men by deceiving them. Hence the great 
body of mankind speak the truth when they are 
not led to act otherwise by a desire to excuse them- 
selves, or by malignity toward their neighbor, or 



108 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

some other like motive. We can reach truth by 
means of testimony. It was in his haste that 
David said, "All men are liars." 

The testimony of one man is often sufficient, be- 
cause of his character, known otherwise, and be- 
cause he has no motive to deceive. We lay down 
rules for our guidance in judging of testimony, as 
that it is a good sign if the statements are direct 
and unartificial. In most cases we seek to have the 
testimony of one man confirmed by another, that 
in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word 
may be established, it being shown that there has 
been no collusion or conspiracy. There are com- 
monly circumstances which corroborate or detract 
from the testimony. Circumstantial evidence is at 
times sufficient to prove that a prisoner has been 
guilty when there is no direct evidence of the act. 
In witness-bearing, books of law and judges on the 
bench lay down rules which may guide the jury in 
the verdict which they bring in. 

History. — Here the evidence is mainly that of 
written testimony, which, however, may be con- 
firmed by original historical documents, such as 
monuments, inscriptions, coins, and ancient charters. 
Laplace, misled by a false analogy derived from the 
diminution of light when reflected successively from 
a number of surfaces, declares that the value of 



Testimony. 109 

testimony may be weakened by transmission, and 
at length altogether lost. {Essay on Prod.) 
This is true of tradition, that is, of oral testimony 
transmitted from mouth to mouth, or from age to 
age ; but Sir G. C. Lewis (Meth. of Obs. and Reas.) 
has shown that " when the testimony of the original 
witness has once been obtained, and recorded either 
by himself or others in an authentic form, it is per- 
petuated so long as the written memorial of it is 
preserved in the original, or in a faithful transcript, 
and may at any time be used for historical pur- 
poses." 

I am to show that testimony is fitted to establish 
the occurrence of supernatural as well as natural 
events. In opening the subject it is essential to 
determine what the natural is, and what the super- 
natural is, especially in their relation one to 
another. 

II. 

There is a Natural System. In seeking to 
find its nature let us recall the distinction drawn in 
Lecture iii ; the Laws of Causation and the Laws of 
Uniformity. In the former there is power in the 
cause to produce the effect. I believe there is an 
intuitive conviction which perceives this, but it is 
not necessary to our present purpose to insist on 
this. It is enough that a long, a combined, an un- 



110 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

contradicted experience testifies to the universality 
of causation. Let it be observed that this means 
that every event has a cause in some mundane 
agency, such as gravity, or electricity, or magnetism, 
or chemical affinity. I believe that every occur- 
rence has a cause in God, but also that it proceeds 
immediately from a power imparted to created ob- 
jects. God is the author of the seasons, but he pro- 
duces them by the relation of the earth and the 
objects on it to the sun. 

Causes are so organized that they lead to general 
results ; what I call laws of uniformity. The earth 
is so related to the moon that the tides are pro- 
duced with their regular times. There is no cau- 
sation implied in their succession ; the incoming 
wave does not produce the receding wave, nor, 
vice versa, does the retiring wave produce the 
next advancing wave. Many of these laws are 
simply co-existences, in which the agents exercise 
no influence on each other. Even in cases of suc- 
cession the antecedent does not produce the con- 
sequent. Thus day does not produce night ; both 
are the issue of causes beyond them. People often 
speak of a law necessarily producing an effect ; this 
is true only of the laws of causality. 

By the arrangement of these causes there is a 
natural system. 



Testimony. 1 1 1 

I. Every substance in nature is endowed with 
certain properties, original or derived. Thus the 
soul .is possessed of powers of consciousness, of 
sense-perception, and feeling. Bodies continue in 
the state in which they happen to be, whether this 
be motion or rest, unless they be influenced by 
powers ab extra ; all bodies attract each other in- 
versely according to the square of the distance ; the 
elements combine according to definite propor- 
tions ; light is propagated by vibrations ; action is 
equal and opposite to reaction ; in polar forces like 
repels like, and attracts unlike ; these are samples 
of properties which may be simple or may be com- 
plex, but are, at all events, natural properties. 
These properties consist essentially in teitdencies; not 
in acts, but tendencies to act on the needful con- 
ditions being supplied. Thus oxygen has the tend- 
ency to combine with hydrogen, and does combine 
with it, when the hydrogen is presented in the 
proper mode. Thus it is the tendency of fire to 
burn when fuel is presented, and the tendency of a 
dead animal body to decay. It will be shown, as 
we advance, that this tendency is never, properly 
speaking, interferred with in any of the miracles of 
Scripture. But our present aim is simply to bring 
out what is the cosmical system. 

2. The substances and their properties are cor- 



112 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

related and distributed so as to produce a general 
and an obvious order. This is effected by the ar- 
rangement of the substances with these properties 
so as to produce here a contemporaneous order, 
and there a regular succession of phenomena which 
can be observed for scientific and for practical pur- 
poses. Of this description are the apparent mo- 
tions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, 
the seasons for sowing and planting, for reaping 
and gathering in fruit, the stages in the life of the 
plant, and a hundred other periodical laws which 
human beings can observe, more or less easily, by 
science or without science, and to which they can 
accommodate themselves, and, as they do so, secure 
the blessings which nature has provided. All this 
order arises from arrangements among the sub- 
stances with their powers. With other distribu- 
tions and collocations of natural agents there might 
be no general laws or the general laws would be dif- 
ferent. The actually existing laws are admirably 
adapted to the constitution of man ; to his intellect- 
ual powers, which delight to discover class and 
cause, and the relations of means and end, and also 
to his practical convenience, as enabling him to an- 
ticipate the future from his experience of the past. 
It is very conceivable that these laws may be in 
themselves an end contemplated by God, and 



Testimony. 113 

pleasing to him as he surveys them. It is certain 
that they are a means toward a farther end, a 
means of making creation intelligible to the intelli- 
gent creature, and capable of being used for prac- 
tical purposes. 

3. There is a large yet limited body of objects 
and powers, constituting nature and performing its 
functions. I believe that the substances, with 
their properties, have all been created by God, and 
also that all their natural relations and dispositions 
have been instituted by him. No human power, 
no natural power, can add new substance to nature, 
or destroy any existing substance ; we may burn the 
hay or stubble, but it is not thereby annihilated ; 
one portion has gone up into the air as smoke, 
another has gone down to the earth as ashes. Not 
only so, it seems to be established by the latest sci- 
ence that power cannot be created or lost, and 
that the sum of force in the world cannot be in- 
creased or diminished by natural means. We may 
transform one natural force into another, or make 
one natural force produce another ; but in all the 
mutual action of bodies the sum of the potential 
and actual energies is never altered. Not only is 
it beyond created power to create or annihilate new 
bodies or substances, it is beyond all natural power 

to create or annihilate force. Nature is a self-com- 
8 



114 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

prised system, globe, or sphere ; in se ipso totus, 
teres, atgue rotundus. 

In saying so, it is not meant to assert that this 
sphere has no points of contact or relationship with 
other compartments of creation, and, still less, that it 
has no dependence on a higher and a supernatural 
power. All that we maintain is, that it has a num- 
ber of agencies which, in their totality, combination, 
and action, constitute the system of nature. A 
miracle, we shall see, does imply the interposition of 
a power beyond this mundane sphere. It serves its 
end because it is the effect of a supernatural 
cause. 

But, meanwhile, let us understand precisely what 
is meant Avhen it is said that nature is a self-con- 
tained system. Let us not suppose that it has been 
proven that it needs nothing to support it, and that 
it will go on forever if left to itself. The geologist, 
in his diggings, has gone a little beneath the sur- 
face, but has not reached the bottom in his ex- 
plorations ; he has gone back many ages, but has 
not reached the beginning, which ever retreats from 
him. The astronomer has penetrated to great dis- 
tances, but he has not reached the outside ; he is 
just impressed the more with the vast circumambient 
region into which his telescope cannot penetrate. 
Science in all its explorings knows not when the 



Testimony. 115 

beginning was, nor when the end shall be; knows 
not where the center is, nor where the circumfer- 
ence is — if, indeed, there be a circumference. This 
knowable world, however large and complete, is not, 
after all, the universe, but only a part of it ; whether 
we follow it behind or before, above or beneath, on 
the right side or the left, it is seen to be broken off; 
beginning we know not when, ending we know not 
where, but certainly not when and where our vision 
fails : it looks hung from above, and resting below, 
on nothing discernible by physical science. There 
is clear evidence that things have not always been 
as they now are ; there was a time, for example, 
when man was not on the earth ; an earlier time 
when there were no animals on the globe. There 
is no evidence that there are physical agencies 
in the world which would keep it existing forever. 
The continental mathematicians of last century 
thought they had gone a step beyond Sir Isaac 
Newton, and demonstrated that, according to laws 
now in existence, the machine would go on through 
all eternity without requiring to be wound up or 
receiving any aid from without. All that they 
proved was that there is a beautiful self-adjusting 
or self-regulating arrangement in the solar system 
which* secures that the obvious variations of the 
motions of the planetary bodies are periodical. 



116 The Tests of The Various Kinds of Truth. 

Later inquiry has shown that there are agencies 
now operating which must in the end dissipate the 
whole existing order of things ; and the most ad- 
vanced science has discovered no natural means of 
counteracting the destructive tendency. The fol- 
lowing are the conclusions drawn by Professor W. 
Thomson. " I. There is at present in the material 
world a universal tendency to the dissipation of me- 
chanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical 
energy, without more than equivalent dissipation, is 
impossible in inanimate material processes, and is 
probably never effected by means of organized mat- 
ter either endowed with vegetable life or subjected 
to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a 
finite period of time past the earth must have been, 
and within a finite period of time to come the earth 
must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at 
present constituted, unless operations have been, 
or are to be, performed which are impossible 
under the laws to which the known operations 
going on at present in the material world are 
subject."* 

All events happening according to the uniformity 
of nature can easily be established by the mouth 
of two or three witnesses. 

* Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1852. 



Testimony. 117 

III. 

There is a Supernatural System. It is in 
the midst of the natural system, to which it is 
adapted, and the two go on in co-operation. 

It may be said to begin with the creation, which 
is supernatural, and necessarily before the # natural, 
which is its product. Sin enters into the govern- 
ment of the holy God, and it is announced to the 
tempter, Gen. 3. 15, "And I will put enmity be- 
tween thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
shalt bruise his heel." This is an epitome of the his- 
tory of the whole world. There is a deliverer, who 
is the seed of the woman, but with vast power to 
crush the head of the serpent, that is the evil ; in 
short, at once human and divine. Henceforth there 
is a struggle and a contest between the powers of 
evil and of good, with God in the midst of it to 
restrain the evil and secure in the end the victory 
of the good. This is the present state of our world, 
as we see it all around us and feel it in the depths 
of our hearts. 

In the midst of the natural the supernatural has 
its place. As types reign in the vegetable and 
mineral kingdom so they also run through the king- 
dom of grace. There is the tree of knowledge of 
good and evil, representing the contending powers 



118 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truths. 

in the world, and also the tree of life for the heal- 
ing of spiritual diseases. Enoch is translated to 
keep alive a belief in immortality. Some are saved 
by an ark in the overwhelming deluge. Abraham 
is called out of a world fast falling into idolatry to 
keep alive the knowledge of the truth. There is 
the establishment of a commonwealth under the 
immediate care of God ; there are prophets, speak- 
ing in the name of God, giving lessons for the pres- 
ent and opening glimpses of the future. There is a 
captivity in Babylon followed by a deliverance, and 
a scattering of the Jews with their Scriptures for the 
wide diffusion of the Gospel. In the fullness of 
times, in the middle of the ages, while Greece had 
furnished its learning and Rome its strong domin- 
ion so as to allow the messengers of the cross 
to spread the glad tidings, the long-expected One 
arrives ; he fulfills his office, goes about continually 
doing good, he is persecuted by the Jews, is in 
agony in the garden, he is forsaken by the Father, 
and dies an accursed death, but before he expires he 
is able to say, " It is finished." 

The death is followed by a resurrection. The 
work of the supernatural goes on but it is after a 
somewhat different manner. Miracles were multi- 
plied while Jesus was upon the earth to testify that 
Jesus was above nature and had come from God, 



Testimony. 119 

There is no proof that there has been any outward 
miracle wrought since the aspostles died. The 
natural, being the ordinance of God, takes its course, 
and the supernatural helps it in the providential 
diffusion of the Gospel, but it is chiefly shown, or 
rather felt, in the hearts of men in converting and 
sanctifying them and in giving them peace. That 
is the old contest, but it is between the flesh and 
the spirit, in which the spirit finally prevails. " The 
Spirit of the Lord shall be poured on all flesh." 

All throughout the Scriptures God is presented 
to us under one and the same aspect, as extending 
mercy to sinners through the sufferings of his Son. 
In the first promise to fallen man, the seed of the 
woman, who was to put his heel on the head of the 
serpent, is described as having his heel bruised as 
he does so. In the first worship of fallen man there 
is the offering of the bleeding lamb. You might 
have discovered the wandering path of the patri- 
archs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the altars 
which they built and the smoke of their sacrifices 
which they offered. Under the law almost all 
things were purified by blood. The grand object 
presented in the New Testament is a bleeding Sav- 
iour suspended upon the cross. It is thus the same 
view that is presented to us under the patriarchal, 
the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations. Ex- 



120 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

cept in the degree of development, there is no dif- 
ference between God as revealed in Eden, in Sinai, 
and on Calvary ; between God as described in the 
books of Moses and God as described so many 
centuries later in the writings of Paul and of John. 
In the garden we have the law given, and indi- 
cations, too, of One coming to deliver from the pen- 
alty. On Mount Sinai there is a law delivered 
amid thunderings and lightnings, but also ordi- 
nances which tell of an atonement for sin. In the 
mysterious transactions on Calvary there is an awful 
forsaking and a fearful darkness, emblematic of the 
righteousness and indignation of God, as well as a 
melting tenderness in the words of our Lord breath- 
ing forgiveness and love, and telling of an open 
paradise : " To-day thou shalt be with me in para- 
dise." The first book of Scripture discloses to us, 
near the commencement, a worshiper offering a 
lamb in sacrifice ; and the last shows a Lamb, as it 
had been slain, in the midst of the throne of God. 

IV. 

There are two systems. Let us look for a mo- 
ment at each. 

The Natural. It is not an intuitive truth, it is 
not self-evident, it is not necessary, it is not uni- 
versal. For a long period people did not believe in 



Testimony. 121 

it. It has been established only within the last few 
ages. It is the result of a large experience and has 
at last been proven by science, which found law in 
every department. 

Thus natural points to the supernatural, that is, 
the existence of God. The order every-where and 
the adaptation of one thing to another are evidence 
of a designing mind. The invisible things of God 
are clearly seen from the things that are made, even 
his eternal power and godhead. We carry this 
truth with us as an important factor into the con- 
sideration of 

The Supernatural. It is of importance to deter- 
mine precisely what this is. First, negatively, it is 
not a violation of the law of cause and effect or any 
intuitive principle in our nature, such as I have ex- 
plained in the first lecture of this work. Were it 
so it could not be proved, could never have ap- 
peared. The supernatural has a cause, and an ad- 
equate cause, in God. This has been shown in two 
philosophical works written by men not prepos- 
sessed in favor of Christianity, by Thomas Brown in 
his work on Causation, and by J. S. Mill in his 
Logic. He who made the world, as his works show, 
continues to work in it, and may for wise and good 
reasons change his mode of procedure. 

A miracle is an interference with the law of cause 



122 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

and effect only so far as that law requires a physical 
cause of a physical event. It does not call in the 
physical cause, because there is a cause in the di- 
vine power. A miracle is an interference with the 
law of uniformity, the nature which I have taken 
such pains to unfold in an earlier part of this lect- 
ure for the purpose of enabling me to explain what 
a miracle is. That law is simply the result of an ar- 
rangement of causes which may be changed. It is 
not guaranteed by any intuitive or necessary con- 
viction. It is simply the result of experience, and 
the experience which has established the natural may 
also establish the supernatural. It is possible, then, 
for a miracle to take place, and it is possible to es- 
tablish it by good and sufficient evidence. Let us 
look at that evidence. 

V. 

How is it, when an ordinary ghost-story is circu- 
lated, that scientific men and educated men gener- 
ally turn away from it, and will scarcely be moved 
to inquire into it ? Because the story is contrary to 
the whole analogy of the system of nature, and is of 
a class which is believed in only by the weak and 
superstitious, little disposed or capacitated to inves- 
tigate evidence. But why do we not turn away in 
the same manner from the stories recorded in the 



Testimony. 123 

life of Jesus ? This is, in fact, the whole argument 
pressed upon the world an age ago in the Essays 
and Reviews, and propagated by the Arnold family, 
especially in their novel. The question can be an- 
swered. There is a vast difference between the two 
cases. The ghost-stories are totally unlike the nar- 
ratives of our Lord's miracles. The ghost tales are 
seldom authenticated to us by clear-headed and 
competent witnesses. When they and the like fab- 
ulous stories are investigated by competent men on 
scientific principles the evidence is dissipated, as 
when Faraday sifted the cases of table-turning. 

It is entirely different from the evangelical his- 
tory. We have the testimony of four witnesses who 
have all the characteristics of true though sinful 
men, and this confirmed by the testimony of an 
educated man of high intellectual gifts, and by the 
whole history of the period, and the successful propa- 
gation of the Gospel in the earlier ages. 

Rut it is said that in the early ages people were 
inclined to believe in the supernatural, and in- 
vented miracles, and that thus their testimony on 
this subject is not to be credited. I .admit the 
premises but deny the conclusion. The people at 
the time of our Lord were ready to believe in mira- 
cles. But, I add, not in such miracles as are re- 
corded in Scripture. They are commonly great 



124 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

wonders, monsters on earth, dazzling lights in the 
sky. They are such as gratify the love of wonder 
and the superstitions of the heart. 

In inquiring of lawyers and of others what is a 
good book on testimony, they refer me to the works 
of Dr. Greenleaf. He gives from the start the fol- 
lowing rules: "The credit due to the testimony of 
witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty; 
secondly, their ability ; thirdly, their number and 
the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the 
conformity of their testimony with experience, and 
fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with col- 
lateral circumstances." Let me apply these rules, 
somewhat amended, to the testimony, to the life, 
and especially the resurrection, of Jesus : I. The 
four evangelists had means of knowing what they 
narrate, for they had been for several years in con- 
stant contact with him. 2. They were transparently 
honest, as every man sees, and had no motive to de- 
ceive, as by telling their story they only exposed 
themselves to persecution. 3. Their writings show 
that they had ability to understand what they 
narrated. 4. We have these four direct witnesses, 
besides others, whose testimony spread the Gospel 
over wide regions. 5. Their tale is consistent. There 
is enough of discrepancy to show that there could 
have been no previous concert among them, and, at 



Testimony. 125 

the same time, such substantial agreement as to 
show that all were independent narrators of the 
same great transaction as the events actually oc- 
curred. 6. Their statements are all in accordance 
with what is told us of the state of Judea and the 
world as given us by trustworthy historians such as 
Josephus, the Jewish, and Tacitus, the Roman, 
historian. 

I admit the premises, but deny the conclusion. 
The people at the time of our Lord were ready 
to believe in the miracles. But, I add, not such 
as are recorded in Scripture. Historians and trav- 
elers tell us what kind of miracles were invented 
among the nations. As a specimen, take those 
mentioned by Livy, the historian, who lived in 
the age immediately before our Lord: ''During 
this winter, at Rome and in its vicinity, many 
prodigies either happened, or, as is not unusual 
when people's minds have once taken a turn to- 
ward superstition, many were reported and credu- 
lously admitted. Among others, it was said, that an 
infant of a reputable family, and only six months 
old, had, in the herb-market, called out, ' Io, Tri- 
umphe ; ' that, in the cattle-market, an ox had, of 
his own accord, mounted up to the third story of a 
house, whence, being affrighted by the noise and 
bustle of the inhabitants, he threw himself down ; 



126 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

that a light had appeared in the sky in the form of 
ships ; that the temple of Hope, in the herb-market, 
was struck by lightning ; that at Lanuvium the 
spear of Juno had shaken of itself ; and that a crow 
had flown into the temple of Juno and pitched on 
the very couch ; that in the district of Amiternum, 
in many places, apparitions of men in white gar- 
ments had been seen at a distance, but had not 
come close to any body; that in Picenum a shower 
of stones had fallen ; at Caere the divining tickets 
were diminished in size. In Gaul a wolf snatched 
the sword of a soldier on guard out of the scabbard, 
and ran away with it. It rained blood in the forum 
at Rome. The spear of a statue of Mars, at Praen- 
este, moved out of its place of its own accord. An 
ox spoke in Sicily. An altar surrounded by men in 
shining garments was seen in the sky. Armed le- 
gions of spirits appeared in Janiculum." In favor of 
no one of these have we the testimony of a single 
eye-witness. They have no worthy meaning. 

How different with the miracles of our Lord. 
We have the record by those who witnessed them. 
We have the testimony of the four evangelists, 
evidently truthful men, each giving his own account, 
and yet all substantially one. 

Christ's work, when on earth, was a work of salva- 
tion. They brought to -him the sick, the maimed, 



Testimony. 127 

and the blind, and he healed them all. If you had 
accompanied Christ on some of his pilgrimages 
when on earth what a glorious sight would you 
have seen ! Not, indeed, such a sight as this world 
admires when it applauds the warrior with strong 
and healthy men before him whom it is his pride 
and glory to cut down and destroy. You would, if 
you had followed Christ, have seen a far different 
but a far more glorious sight. You would have seen 
before him, on the way by which he was to pass, the 
road covered with couches with the sick laid out 
upon them ; and you would have seen the dumb, 
when they could not speak, striving to give ex- 
pression to their woes by their earnest struggles ; 
and you would have heard the blind, when they 
could not see him, crying to be taken to him. This 
was the scene before him ; and behind him, after he 
had passed, were the sick bearing their couches, and 
the lame leaping like the harts, and the dumb sing- 
ing his praises, and the blind gazing earnestly upon 
him Avith joyful eyes, and the lunatics in their right 
minds, and those lately dead in the embraces of 
their friends. Yes, these were the fruits that fol- 
lowed Christ's visits wherever he went. And he is 
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever. His office, his prerogative, is still to seek and 
to save that which is lost. He is in this world now 



128 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

by his Spirit, as he once was by his bodily presence. 
He is not to be discerned by any pomp or external 
splendor. The kingdom of God cometh not by 
observation ; but still we may discern him by the 
eye of faith. Before him are persons afflicted with 
all manner of soul maladies: some under the power 
of wild passion, by which they are led captive at 
pleasure, some covered all over with the leprosy of 
vice, all of them blind to the perception of spiritual 
beauty and deaf to the voice of God addressed to 
them. Wherever Christ goes the way is strewn 
with such ; and wherever he goes he leaves behind 
him traces of his presence. Before him, as he 
marches through our world, are the blind, the deaf, 
the dying, and the dead ; and behind him are the 
seeing, the hearing, the living, the lovely, and the 
loving. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; 
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good 
tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up 
the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
tives, and the opening of the prison to them that 
are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year of the 
Lord." 

The witnesses were plain, unsophisticated men. 
Then we have the declaration of one of the great 
men of the world, altogether independent of his 
inspiration — a scholar, a writer, an actor of great 



Testimony. 129 

practical wisdom. Paul, once so strongly preju- 
diced against the Crucified, assures us that he saw- 
Christ in the flesh, and that he was overcome by 
him. The Arnolds evidently feel a sensitive shrink- 
ing from the honest, sturdy, outspoken apostle. 
The novelist tells us he was no reasoner. Those 
who can reason themselves know that in the Ro- 
mans, and in all his epistles, he is one of the most 
powerful reasoners that ever put together premises 
and conclusions. At times he makes a digression, 
but it is as a man who steps back a few feet that 
he may gather force to clear the chasm. 

Every man who reads the gospels has a miracle 
set before him in the discourses of our Lord, which, 
for sublime doctrine and pure precept, for grace 
and elevation of sentiment, for faithfulness and for 
pathos and for tenderness, for indignation against 
sin and pity for the sinner, for knowledge of the 
human heart, and love to men, women, and chil- 
dren, transcend all the highest intellects have done 
in Greece and Rome, and, as spoken by a Galilean 
peasant, are themselves a miracle. 

The common Christian has not just to prove a 
miracle against an infidel. All that he has to do 
for his own conviction is to find that Christianity 
came from uneducated men in Galilee. This 
granted, the miracle follows ; and he is con- 



130 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

strained to say, "Thou hast conquered me, O 
Galilean." 

VI. 

" What think you of Christ ? Whose Son is he ? " 
We are obliged to think of him, and we have to 
answer the question, "Whose Son is he? Whence 
does he come ? " We may suppose that he, a 
mechanic in Galilee, uttered all these truths, the 
Sermon on the Mount, and the parables, and we 
have already a miracle. Or, if we may adopt a 
more refined theory, and suppose that there was a 
wonderful carpenter's son in Nazareth, and that a 
body of fishermen on the lake constructed the Life 
of Christ out of him, we have a still more astound- 
ing miracle, with nothing resembling it in the his- 
tory of the world. 

Take one supernatural event — the resurrection of 
Jesus. We have as full proof of it as of any event 
in ancient history — say the death of Julius Caesar, 
which every one believes in. We have as clear evi- 
dence that these four evangelists wrote the gospels 
as that Xenophon wrote the memoirs of Socrates. 
But the grand proof of the truth of our religion 
lies in the combination of evidence. We have a 
treble cord, which cannot be broken. How have 
men of science established the doctrine of the 
uniformity of nature ? By an accumulation and 



Testimony. 131 

combination of observations in all departments of 
nature. It is in the same way that we prove that 
there is a supernatural system in the midst of the 
natural, and fitting into it. Round the life and 
death and resurrection of Jesus we have a body of 
conspiring evidences. There were antecedents and 
there are consequents. We have the anticipation 
in the history, types, and prophecies of the Old 
Testament. Then we have the results flowing from 
the belief in the resurrection of Christ, the preach- 
ing of the Gospel, the spread of Christianity in all 
countries, the production and fostering of all that is 
good in art and history, in the elevation of morals, 
in the establishment of schools and colleges and 
hospitals, in raising the status of the working 
classes, in the comfort imparted to poor and 
afflicted ones, in the converting power of the grace 
of God, in the slaves of the wildest passions sitting 
at the feet of Jesus clothed and in their right mind. 
All these constitute, from first to last, a unity, a 
system ; he who would overthrow it will have to 
attack, not the mere outposts, but the consistent 
whole. It is a bounteous river system — with its 
waters flowing over the waste places of the earth, 
but issuing from the throne of God in heaven. 

All these miracles are worthy of God and 
adapted to the state of man ; with a few exceptions 



132 The Tests of the Various Kinds of Truth. 

they are wrought to deliver from pressing evils in 
our world, from disease, from sorrow, from sin. 
The grand end of the whole is the redemption of 
the soul, for which the great men of the world have 
labored, but have failed of their end. 

Nor let it be urged that the Jewish and heathen 
worlds were so predisposed toward the miraculous 
that the early Christians had only to proclaim it to 
find all men believing it. For it is to be remem- 
bered that the Gentiles got it from the Jews whom 
they hated, and the Jews from the Galileans whom 
they despised. 

More persuasive, if not more convincing, we have 
what are called the internal evidences : the suitable- 
ness of Christianity to man's nature and wants, to 
his felt weakness, and his sinfulness, for which an 
atonement has been provided ; as bringing life and 
immortality to light, and as rolling away the great 
stone that closed the tomb, and opening the grave 
that the spirit may arise to heaven. 



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